


an impossible view

by kafkian



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Codependency, Dennis Reynolds POV, Depression, Explicit Sexual Content, First Time, Fix-It, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Post-Season/Series 13, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-05
Updated: 2019-08-09
Packaged: 2020-06-11 13:56:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 65,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19539577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kafkian/pseuds/kafkian
Summary: ‘You’re what?’ Dennis asks blankly.‘I’m moving out,’ Mac explains. The same three words he said a second ago, and they don’t make any more sense in that order than they did the first time. ‘I was just – I was thinking about what you said, about wanting – uh. Wanting me to move out. And it kind of made sense, so. I guess I’m doing it.’‘How did it make sense?’ Dennis asks.---After the events of Season 13, Mac moves out. Dennis handles it really well, obviously.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> [slaps roof of brain] this baby can fit so many macdennis feelings in it
> 
> This is my attempt to fix season 13. Or maybe not fix it, but at least make sense of it. I just wanted them to talk to each other again! And I figured that in order to do that, somebody had to break away first, so that they could come back. This fic starts off hard (please bear the tags in mind and message me if you want more specific content warnings), but it gets a lot happier. Like, a LOT. 
> 
> I played fast and loose with some s13 stuff, like the clip show episode, because frankly I found it difficult to keep track of what was going on there. YOLO. 
> 
> This fic is complete, I will be posting it weekly on Fridays, and it will have a happy ending. I'll add tags as I go, just bear in mind that the usual Sunny unhealthiness applies. Sorry to everyone who subscribed recently and assumed they would be getting more Good Omens fic. Unfortunately the heart wants what the heart wants, and my heart is stupid.
> 
> Title is from 'Me & My Dog' by boygenius. Even if you hate the fic, you should listen to it.

‘You’re what?’ Dennis asks blankly.

‘I’m moving out,’ Mac explains. The same three words he said a second ago, and they don’t make any more sense in that order than they did the first time.

He’s got all the props to prove it – the cardboard box full of junk in his hands, sleeves of his henley rolled up to his elbows because it’s January now and even Mac isn’t stupid enough to wear tanks in temperatures like these. He’s even wearing the mandatory moving-day expression – nostalgic with a hint of regret – but it just doesn’t compute. Dennis is still wearing his pyjamas. He was asleep until about three minutes ago when he shuffled out of his room to get coffee. He feels his own face screwing up as he stares at Mac, trying to process what he’s saying.

Mac sets the box down, taking on the cautious expression of someone about to approach a deer they just hit with their car. A vein jumps in Dennis’s forehead. ‘I was just – I was thinking about what you said, about wanting – uh. Wanting me to move out. And it kind of made sense, so. I guess I’m doing it.’

‘How did it make sense?’ Dennis asks. Mac raises an eyebrow. ‘I mean – obviously it made sense, just – walk me through it, Mac. What, uh – when did you decide this, exactly? Where are you gonna go? Do you even have anyone to drive all your stuff?’

‘That’s like, four different questions, dude. Which one did you want me to –’

‘I said walk me through it,’ Dennis snaps. ‘Think you can manage that, Mac?’

Letting his distress flicker outward is satisfying for a second – it’s so reassuring to see Mac flinch – but the hurt doesn’t linger on his face like it usually does. Mac sets his jaw, looking Dennis square in the eye. An unfamiliar posture, these days. A tendril of unease stirs in Dennis’s stomach.

‘You said you didn’t like living with me,’ Mac says with a slightly practised air, as if this isn’t the first time he’s been through this explanation. ‘Like, I’m annoying and you wanted time on your own. And I remembered – I remembered about the times you’ve kicked me out before, and I thought maybe this time I should go.’ His voice hardens. ‘Before you get around to doing it again.’

‘I wasn’t going to kick you out,’ Dennis tells him. He’s still groggy with sleep and doesn’t really feel like he’s landed in the conversation yet, which explains that weakass answer but not why Mac looks so unmoved by it. Dennis tries for an incredulous laugh, but it doesn’t do anything to shift Mac’s implacable expression. Dennis swallows again, scrunching his hands up to try and settle the panicky itch at the centre of his palms. ‘Come on, man. You know I can’t afford this place all by myself. You can’t leave me high and dry like that.’

‘You managed before,’ Mac points out. ‘All the other times. And I had to do it when you went to North Dakota.’

‘That’s different,’ Dennis argues, pointing an accusatory finger for emphasis. This is good, this is solid – this is something he can work with. ‘I was trying to make my family work, Mac, I wasn’t leaving on a whim after some kind of tantrum –’

‘That is literally exactly what you did.’ Mac’s brow is furrowed but he looks more resigned than pissed off, and it’s not doing good things for the quickly expanding knot of nausea in Dennis’s stomach. This isn’t how things go. If he can’t get to Mac, he doesn’t know where he is. It would be fine if _Dennis_ was kicking _Mac_ out, but it’s not fair for Mac to make this decision for both of them. Dennis has to get a handle on this before Mac does something he regrets. ‘Don’t put this all on me, dude, you’re the one who tried to convince me we didn’t live together.’

‘No,’ Dennis says, definite. ‘No, I didn’t, because that didn’t even really happen, Mac, that was all in my –’

‘It _did_ happen and you _did_ say it,’ Mac cuts across him, and this time it’s exactly as angry as Dennis wanted him to get. But as soon as it appears it’s gone again: Mac closes his eyes and inhales deep and slow, and when he opens them he looks older, somehow, in the space of a few seconds. ‘I’m sorry if it’s weird for you, man, but I think – I think this is gonna be better. For both of us.’

Dennis stares at him.

‘Is this about that dance?’ he asks abruptly. ‘Is that why you’re all – deep breathing and meditating and shit now?’

‘What? No, I’m not – where the hell do you think I’ve been meditating, Dennis –’

‘In your fucking room, Mac, seeing as you’ve hardly come out of it for two weeks and I haven’t felt the dildo bike shaking the walls every other hour –’

‘No, look – okay, a) that’s none of your business and b) that’s not the point, Dennis, we’re getting off-track here –’

‘I really don’t think we are,’ Dennis talks over him. He can feel the skin of his face pulling tight around his mouth and his hands are starting to shake and Mac is just standing there watching him calmly as if things aren’t falling apart around their ears, as if he isn’t _dismantling them._ ‘I want to know what went down in that prison, Mac, ‘cause you’ve been acting really weird ever since. I think it fucking scrambled your circuits.’

‘I don’t want to talk about this with you,’ Mac tells him, stony-faced, just like he did last time.

‘ _Why_?’

‘Because you won’t understand!’

‘What is there to understand?’ Dennis laughs, scornful. ‘You did some weird interpretive gay dance in front of your dad and guess what, Mac? It didn’t make any difference! He still doesn’t love you. Whatever connection you were looking for there, you’re never going to get it. It was pathetic of you to even try.’

That lands. Mac’s eyes go fixed and glassy, his mouth a tight line. He stares at Dennis for so long that Dennis starts to hear the echo of his own words coming back to him. He shifts from one foot to the other, resisting the urge to look away. Mac wants so much for him to be honest but it’s always a trap: he’s always looking for ways he can twist what Dennis says into what he wants to hear. It’s not Dennis’s fault this can’t be twisted.

‘That’s why,’ Mac says eventually. He gives a half-choked laugh that grates on Dennis’s nerves like nails on a chalkboard. ‘You know, man, if you want me to stay you could just say that, instead of lashing out.’

Dennis catches himself folding his arms over his chest and stops mid-motion, holding them straight at his sides. He shouldn’t be the one feeling defensive here – Mac is the one in the wrong, and Dennis is just putting him in his place. That’s all. That’s all this is.

‘I know that’s what you want to think,’ he says pseudo-gently, watching the words score almost visible lines into Mac’s expression, ‘but I’ve told you, man. It’s never going to happen, okay? You gotta give it up, I don’t –’

‘That’s not,’ Mac starts and then has to stop, his throat working. His eyelashes flicker for a second. ‘I know that. That’s not what I’m saying. You could want me to stay without it – without it being about that.’

Dennis spaces out for a second. He opens his mouth to say something but nothing comes. How long has Mac been thinking about this? He must be pretty desperate to get away, to wake up before ten.

There’s a stack of boxes next to the door that sucks in Dennis’s attention like a black hole. It doesn’t add up to much, obviously. A crucifix sticks out from behind a cardboard flap like a bad pun. Dennis stares at it, willing it to jolt some decisive answer loose: depending on what he says next, Mac isn’t just moving out eventually, he’s moving out _now_. 

‘I can’t make rent on my own,’ he says more or less at random, still staring at the crucifix. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Mac’s face change, but he doesn’t look at him. He doesn’t look. 

‘Frank’d help you out,’ Mac says quietly. ‘Until you found a new roommate or whatever. I already talked to him about it.’

A noncommittal noise comes out of Dennis’s throat. Already talked to him about it. So this isn’t out of nowhere, this is – Mac’s been thinking about this while they’ve been driving around together, going to work, picking up groceries, hanging out at home. _Their_ home. Dee, Charlie and Frank came over for Mexican night last Tuesday and they wrecked the kitchen making fajitas, drinking tequila. Mac passed out on the couch with half a lime in his mouth. He didn’t try to lick salt off Dennis’s hand the entire night. Had he decided by then? Or was he still weighing it up, trying to figure out if it was worth staying? He must have had enough time to plan it, talk to Frank about rent money, ask around for a place to stay. And nothing Dennis has said or done in all that time has been enough to stop it.

‘Have you found a new place?’ he grates out.

If Mac goes, there’ll be no more dildo bike weirdness, but no more company on the drive home from work. No more touching that breaches Dennis’s carefully drawn barriers, but no more coffee Dennis doesn’t have to make himself. No more irritating bossiness but no more ego boosts. No more sharing a bathroom but no more necessary intimacy, so old and worn and familiar by this point that Dennis can’t even tell whether he’s comfortable with it or not. If he wants it or not. 

No more Mac, but – no more Mac.

‘Yeah,’ Mac says, after just a fraction of a second too long. ‘Yeah, I’ve got, uh – I’m gonna share with Rex for a while. His old roommate just moved out, so.’

It occurs to Dennis that this could lead to the logical conclusion that Mac and Rex are a thing now, but a smooth barrier of indifference inserts itself between him and that possibility before he has a chance to process the thought. It’s none of his business. Mac can do what he likes with his dick. He didn’t seem to like Rex’s new figure the last time Dennis heard about it so he’d be surprised, but it doesn’t matter, it’s not relevant to the conversation that they’re having. There’s no reason for Dennis to care about it, and so he doesn’t.

‘Okay,’ he says, for lack of literally anything he can bring himself to ask. If he’s not going to ask about Rex, then how can he ask who’s helping Mac move, or how he’s going to get to work without Dennis to drive him, or how long he thinks Rex is going to put up with all his annoying habits, or any of the other questions scraping against the back of his throat? How can he express any interest at all? The growing collection of barriers he’s been constructing between them looks more like a maze now than a carefully cultivated set of boundaries. It looks more like a trap. 

‘Okay?’ Mac repeats, watching him closely.

Dennis can’t say anything, doesn’t say anything, feels a surge of irritation so raw he has to clench his hands into fists.

The look on Mac’s face resolves into something determined and sad. He sighs, bending to pick up the box at his feet. ‘Okay.’

He’s almost out of the door when he hesitates, one hand holding it open and one clutching the box. ‘We’ll still see each other at work, obviously,’ he says. He’s trying to look Dennis in the eye but not quite managing it, stuck somewhere around his left ear. It’s just as puppyish as Dennis would have imagined it would be, if he’d been playing this out in his head: just as pathetic, just as rage-inducing. Just as sad. ‘But I’ll try to, uh, stay out of your way, I guess.’

‘Great,’ Dennis spits, letting the full force of his shame and fear flood into his voice. ‘You do that. I’m sure we’ll all be a lot happier.’

Mac blinks at him and then gives another of those choked laughs.

‘Jesus,’ he mutters. He lets the door fall closed on a muffled retort that probably wasn’t funny or cutting at all, but which Dennis still wants to claw out of the air nonetheless, every stupid fucking word.

\---

‘Yep.’

‘It’s me,’ Dennis says. For a moment, he can’t think of anything else. ‘Dennis.’

‘Dennis!’ Dee oozes, injecting her voice with so much fake positivity that a curl of loathing extends from the dead weight lodged in the base of Dennis’s stomach. He almost shudders with it; if she was here, he’d hit her with no compunction at all. It would make him feel better, and he’d be glad of the opportunity. ‘It’s good to hear from you too. I’m doing great, thanks for asking.’

‘Okay,’ he says. It’s weird that he can’t come up with anything else to say. It seems weird. He saw her twelve hours ago, absolutely shit-faced, he knows she’s not fine. Usually he’d call her on bullshit that blatant but he can’t, he can’t right now, because – ‘Did you know Mac was moving out?’

‘Mac’s moving out?’ she parrots. Dennis closes his eyes so slowly and painfully it feels like a performance, for no one but himself. ‘Into what, a coffin?’

‘That’s not funny,’ Dennis tells her dully. It isn’t, but at the same time, it kind of is. There’s a part of him that wants to laugh, albeit hysterically, but that part feels very far away from all the other parts, as if they’re all locked in separate rooms in his brain, peering in at each other through connecting windows, hands wrapped curiously around the bars.

‘Dennis?’

Dennis jumps. He can’t remember what he was talking to Dee about until he blinks and looks down and sees his hand, the one that isn’t holding the phone, curled up on itself hard, bitten nails pressing into the flesh of his palms so hard the skin is starting to tear, and he thinks, _oh._

‘Did you know?’ he asks Dee. Mac had cleared his room in two trips down to Rex’s car and Dennis had stayed frozen on the couch the entire time, the fist of his ribs clenching harder and harder around his lungs until it was almost impossible to breathe. ‘Did you know?’

‘No, I mean – I think it’s pretty obvious from my answer that I didn’t, Dennis.’

‘Right.’ Mac didn’t say goodbye before he took the last box down so Dennis had stayed like that on the couch for half an hour or more, before it became clear that Mac wasn’t coming back up. ‘Okay.’ He hadn’t looked at Mac once the whole time he was moving his stuff, but he could hear it, and he knew when Mac was looking at him, he could feel it, and he heard the way Mac sighed when Dennis wouldn’t look back.

‘What happened?’ Dee sounds interested now. What must it be like to be interested in this situation, for it to be something that’s happening outside yourself? To be casually intrigued by this development? For it to be _gossip_ to you _?_ ‘Did you do something? Aside from like, being yourself?’

‘If I knew that, I wouldn’t be calling you to ask why.’

‘Good point,’ she muses. ‘Man, this is such a weird move. I really thought you’d never get him out of there, you know? Like he’d be one of those Egyptian women they used to throw in the tombs of the pharaohs ‘cause they didn’t wanna live without their hubbies. Or those widows who throw themselves on funeral pyres. That’s Mac.’

‘Mac isn’t my widow,’ Dennis says, completely monotone. Dee snorts with laughter at the dissonance. He understands it and he hates her for it in equal measure, for not being able to control her shit when he can’t control his, and for not being nice to him, and for laughing when he can’t. ‘Shut up, you stupid bitch.’

_That_ hooks her laughter and yanks it sideways into an ugly strangled sound, like something stuck in her throat. One side of Dennis’s mouth lifts in satisfaction.

‘You shut up,’ she tells him but it’s weak, all the humour drained out of her voice now. ‘What do you want, anyway? So Mac’s gone. What do you want me to do about it?’

‘I wanted to know if he said anything to you,’ Dennis recalls vaguely, after a moment. It requires some digging. ‘About leaving.’

‘I already told you I didn’t know,’ Dee says slowly.

‘Right, but,’ Dennis sits up straighter, suddenly imbued with a wave of energy. ‘He just did it, this morning. He just packed up his stuff and left. And he must have said something to someone, he must have made plans, he –’

‘Is he moving in with Charlie? Maybe he’ll know –’

‘No, no, he’s moving in with Rex.’

‘Huh.’ A pause. ‘Maybe it’s like, a scheme or something?’

‘No,’ Dennis says, voice dying away to almost nothing before he clears his throat and tries again. ‘I mean, maybe. Maybe there’s a scheme.’

Dee goes silent then. Dennis knows what she’s thinking – what finally tipped Mac over the edge? What was the final straw? What could Dennis have done that was finally, finally mean enough to push Mac away for good? He knows she’s thinking this because all the possible final straws have been looping on a reel in the back of his mind ever since Mac opened his mouth and said _I’m moving out_ ; took that straw and broke Dennis’s back with it, too.

‘Weird,’ Dee says eventually. ‘I think it’s weird.’

‘Is that all you have to say?’ Dennis snaps, surging with disbelief. ‘ _Weird_? Is that really all you’ve got?’

‘Okay, sorry,’ she snaps back. ‘What do you want me to say? It _is_ weird, I don’t know what you – are you, like. Are you okay?’

‘I’m fine,’ Dennis tells her furiously. He hears Dee give a huff of breath but she doesn’t argue with him, and for the first time in this conversation he’s genuinely glad he called her. He could have called Charlie, but Charlie is Mac’s as well as Dennis’s, in a way that Dee never has been. And he just needed to talk to someone, anyone, anything to fill the time before he has to go to work. Work, where –

He clears his throat. ‘I’m fine, I just – I wanted to know if he said anything to you, that’s all. I wanted to just. I don’t know.’

‘Great,’ Dee says at length. ‘Glad we got that cleared up.’

‘Shut up,’ he says reflexively. ‘Are you busy today?’

‘Got work later,’ she says a little wryly. ‘As do you.’

‘Yeah, but not for hours. Are you free besides that?’

‘Yes,’ she says, after a second. ‘I will not be free if it turns out you want me to do something that sucks, however.’

‘I want to clean the apartment,’ he says, more or less at random. ‘That seems like – something I should do.’

‘In that case then yes, I am busy.’

‘Dee, don’t be a giant bitch about this, okay? I need someone to – I just need you to help me clean the apartment, okay?’

‘I don’t understand why I should be the one to help you do that when I literally never go to your apartment and Mac is the one who made it so gross in the first place,’ she says, in one long complaining rush, her voice getting really nasal and whiny toward the end. ‘That doesn’t seem fair at all.’

‘You should be the one to help me out because you’re my sister,’ he tells her. There is a stone-cold silence from her end of the line. ‘And because I will give you twenty bucks.’

‘Thirty.’

‘Twenty-five.’

‘Done,’ she says with great satisfaction. ‘I’ll be over in an hour. Shall I bring _Beaches_ and Ben & Jerry’s, or will you be less of a suicide risk by the time I get there?’

‘Only if you remember to leave your personality at home,’ he snaps, and hangs up on her.

\---

The walls start to bear down on him again as soon as he gets off the phone.

He looks around himself. He’s sitting, quiet, all alone on the couch in an apartment that he no longer shares with anyone else. It’s amazing how fast your perceptions of a place can change. He’s been alone in the apartment a million times in a million different circumstances – and lately he’s been wishing he could be alone in it more often – but never once did that aloneness dig in the way it does right now: as if he might be the only person alive for miles around. As if he might wither away into nothing, just slumped here on the couch, not showering or eating or sleeping for days, and not one soul on earth would notice because why would they, when he lives alone?

Except Dee, he reminds himself. Dee will know, if she gets here in an hour and he’s still sat here, bolted to the floor as if Mac drove nails through his feet when he closed the door for the last time and Dennis didn’t know, how could Mac leave without even making it clear that that was the last box? Leaving Dennis on the couch like that, staring at the tops of his own knees, how could he go? The last box had bedsheets in it, as if Mac ever bothered with those anyway. He could easily have set it down, come over to say goodbye to Dennis’s face. It can’t have been heavy. It wouldn’t have taken much effort to pick it back up.

Dennis stares at his phone. He swipes at his face angrily when the screen starts to get blurry, although it doesn’t matter as no one is texting him anyway. He could do this when he was in North Dakota; he was capable of being alone there. He’d had to be. But he’d got through it because he’d always known, in the back of his mind, that he could come back home if he needed to. If worst came to worst and it didn’t work out, then he could go back to Philly.

But now he’s back, and he’s been back for months, and it still doesn’t really feel like he is. And there’s no one here to see, and talk to him, and show him that he’s real.

His heart is pounding but his whole body feels heavy. It’s impossible to move, to sit up, to be. Dee will see him, when she gets here. Dee will see him, and that will make him real, and then he will – stop thinking about this, he can stop. He can. He’s going to stop thinking about it. 

He lurches up off the couch, driven by the momentum of this thought, and stops mid-movement when he realises there’s nowhere for him to go. He can’t go in the kitchen because he couldn’t eat right now if someone paid him and anyway, he knows without even opening the fridge that everything inside was put there by Mac. The milk in the door, four days past its expiration date. Mac’s stupid protein shakes. He used to buy little snack foods to try and trick Dennis into eating, years ago: little string cheeses and smoothie packs and brownie bites, pumped full of sugar and fat. He’d buy them on grocery runs and act like they were for him and then not touch any of them, just leave them there on the shelf. Little piles of temptation. He always played innocent when Dennis called him on it, as if he could lie worth shit. He doubled down on it when Dennis came back from North Dakota, pushed it really hard until Dennis made a point of sweeping them into the trash in front of him. He hasn’t tried it since then.

No kitchen then. That’s fine, he’ll – Dennis can do without coffee, for now, and he’ll get Dee to make it when she gets here. And then when she’s here and they’re cleaning it’ll be different, and Dennis will be too busy arguing with her to think about whose fingerprints he’ll be cleaning off the handle of the fridge, whose stray socks he’s fishing out from underneath the couch, the way Mac’s face had looked – collapsed – when Dennis spat that he would be happier, _happier,_ like this. 

He doesn’t have to be wrong, he tells himself. There’s still time for that to be true. This is just the worst part, that’s all – it was always going to be the worst part. He made the right decision, calling Dee. As long as he doesn’t have to be alone.

\---

He gets through the shower by carefully not looking at the cleared-out half of the shower caddy where Mac’s stuff used to be. The tubs of hair gel that used to sit under the sink in a precariously swaying stack are gone too. He wants to laugh at himself, he really does, because he’s acting like Mac is dead and it’s pathetic, it’s – he’s the fucking weeping widow Dee was talking about, he knows that, but he can’t turn it off. It’s pouring out of him.

It’s fine. Dee will get here, and she’ll give him shit for showing weakness but she’ll still be here, a body in the room, and so things will be fine. As long as he can avoid being alone for the next 24 hours – the worst part, this has to be the worst part – then everything will be fine.

He’s sat on the end of his bed only half-dressed when he hears Dee pounding on the door. He’d managed jeans but got side-tracked before he could pull on his shirt, hanging limply in his grip. His eye is caught on the TV in the corner of his room. Last week he’d renewed their cable contract and Mac had kicked in a hundred bucks without even being asked, even though he’d never done that before. And Dennis hadn’t wanted to make a huge deal out of it because it was only what Mac should have been doing anyway, and you shouldn’t reward someone just for baseline good behaviour, but he’d been so surprised that a _thank you_ had broken out anyway, genuine and relieved, and he remembers now that Mac had flushed a little, looked away, gone over to talk to Charlie at the other end of the bar, and Dennis had thought it was kind of weird for Mac not to make a mountain out of whatever small nice moment they were sharing like he always does these days, it was weird but Mac was weird so it was whatever, except that it wasn’t really whatever because now Dennis knows that he must have done that because he felt guilty, because he was leaving, leaving Dennis with all the bills from now on, leaving Dennis _alone_.

‘Okay,’ Dee says after a long moment of contemplation, when he finally gets to the door. ‘I was one hundred percent prepared to be a huge bitch about this, but – are you okay? You look like shit.’

‘Thanks,’ Dennis says.

She blinks in surprise. It makes sense. He’s never heard his voice sound that blank.

They stare at each other for a moment, then the engine of Dennis’s brain turns over and jerks to life, and he steps back from the door to let her inside.

‘Seriously,’ Dee tells him, her voice sharpening as she walks past him. ‘This is kind of – you look really bad.’

Her gaze flits quickly over the apartment and then back to Dennis as she speaks. He’s jealous of the way she does it, as if it means nothing to her that Mac is gone and his absence is palpable in the bare patches on the dusty bookcase, the unnatural stillness of the room. Nothing about her expression has changed. A very distant lightbulb flickers on in Dennis’s head: Dee’s always had kind of a hate-on for Mac, and one way to get through this would be to cultivate a similar perspective. If he can just hate Mac enough that it’s impossible to miss him, then he won’t have to think about this anymore. He won’t have to feel like this. It will go away.

‘You should have seen the other guy,’ Dennis says, a minute too late and with none of the energy which might have made it a semi-decent joke, under the circumstances.

Dee frowns. ‘What?’

‘I don’t know,’ Dennis tells her, and there he goes again – the dead quality of his voice visibly startles her before she can bottle it, eyes widening. If she had pointed ears like an animal, a cat or a rabbit or a fawn, they’d be flat against her skull.

‘Okay,’ Dee says slowly. ‘I think maybe we should get you, like. Some coffee or something? Or do you have like – do you have meds? Should you be taking meds?’

‘What meds?’

‘Literally any meds, at this point,’ she says tensely.

‘I don’t – want to talk about that,’ he says. Everyone always thinks meds are the answer, as if a couple of pills are going to fix his personality. He’s like fucking Hannibal Lecter, they don’t even have a _word_ for what he is. Every single diagnosis he’s been given since he was a teenager was a step further down the staircase of dull-eyed resignation, with a few brief pitstops for hope every time a shiny new mood stabiliser came along. But they don’t change anything, not really. Not for him. ‘Anyway, I’ve decided it’s for the best.’

‘What’s for the best? Mac leaving?’

‘Yes.’ He says it slowly, a child stretching out an affirmation. Maybe in the time it takes to say it, he can make it true. ‘Yes. It’s fine, it’s going to be fine.’

‘Is it?’ Dee asks, folding her arms across her chest.

‘Yes,’ Dennis replies, a little angry now. He’s already said it twice. How many times does she need to hear it? He can’t make it true if no one else will believe him. ‘I told you.’

‘And you decided that, just now?’ Dee pushes, cocking one eyebrow. ‘You, of the twenty-year co-dependence fest?’

‘Yes, shut up.’ He swallows once, twice. His tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth. ‘Mac is – _was_ really annoying to have as a roommate. He was. He was the worst.’

‘Well,’ Dee says. ‘I mean, yeah. We all knew that. We just didn’t think –’

‘What?’ Dennis snaps. ‘What have you all been thinking? You been talking about it behind my back, huh?’

Dee purses her lips.

‘We were thinking,’ she says, not rising to it, ‘that you kind of didn’t seem to mind, that he was the worst? Or you probably would have kicked him out by now.’

‘I did kick him out,’ he reminds her. ‘Twice, actually.’

‘For like, a combined period of a week.’

‘It worked out longer than a week.’

‘Not _much_ longer –’

‘That’s not the point – look, he said, when he was leaving, he said – he told me he wanted to go before I kicked him out again, because I seemed like I was – like I was tired. Of him living here.’

‘Hmm. Well, I’d say it’s weirdly empathetic of him to pick up on something like that, but you have been hitting the bitchy button pretty hard lately, even for you.’

‘I have?’ Dennis asks, without meaning to. He shakes his head. He wants an explanation, sure, but Dee’s the last person he wants it from, and he doesn’t want to go giving her the impression that her reading of this situation is welcome in any way. She’s here purely to stop him hurting himself any more than he already has. ‘No, don’t tell me, I – I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘Okay,’ Dee says, holding her hands up. ‘You’re the one who invited me here and then started talking about it before I even took off my jacket, but fine. Whatever you want, it’s your twenty-five dollars. Or mine, I guess, by the time we’re –’

‘Oh my god, you’re annoying,’ Dennis interrupts, too loudly. There it is, the sweet relief of anger: the most reliable distraction he has. ‘We’re not here to talk, we’re here to clean.’

‘So let’s do it.’ Dee takes off her jacket and starts rolling up her sleeves. ‘Put your money where your mouth is. Or like, put your bleach where your mouth is, that’s probably a better –’

‘Jesus _Christ,_ would you shut up?’

\---

They clean every room in the apartment except for Mac’s.

‘We don’t have to,’ Dee says, after they’ve been staring at the door for five solid minutes. Mac left it open halfway, giving a glimpse of the bare mattress inside, the edge of the bed frame. What if he left some stuff in there? What if there’s like, a shrine to Dennis? What about the fucking _dildo bike_? ‘We can do it another day.’

‘I don’t want to do it another day,’ Dennis says in a monotone. ‘I don’t want to do it at all.’

‘Amen to that,’ Dee says, snorting a little. ‘Who even knows how much jizz that room has seen? It’s got to be a major health hazard, at this point.’

‘That’s not really why I don’t want to do it.’ Dennis blinks, alarmed by how honest that was. He really has to get a better handle on his emotions after they’re done here. Because after they’re done, then they have to go to work, and when they get to work, there will be –

And he can’t not go. If he doesn’t go, it’ll seem like he’s not okay.

‘I know,’ Dee says, sounding uncomfortable. ‘But it’s why I don’t want to do it, and this whole vibe is really creeping me out anyway. You’re acting like he’s dead, you know that? Like he got hit by a bus or murdered by a grindr hook-up or something, and now you’ve got to deal with his remains.’

‘It’s not _remains,_ ’ Dennis snaps, smarting. ‘You don’t call it _remains_ when it’s just the person’s stuff. You call that their _effects,_ and their remains is like – the remains is their body, what’s left of their body.’

‘Gross,’ Dee says succinctly. ‘And again, if I may exhibit the evidence to the court – you’re totally acting like he’s dead. He’s not. We’re going to see him at work in like, less than two hours.’

‘Maybe he won’t come in today,’ Dennis says. Dee shoots him a look but he doesn’t meet her eye, staring steadfastly at the corner of the bedframe he can see through the open door. ‘It was his moving day, after all. There must be a lot to get done.’

‘Like what?’ Dee asks. ‘Nailing his crucifix to the wall above the bed should take about thirty seconds, and then he’ll be done. He had like, barely any stuff. It’s kind of ridiculous, for a man of forty.’

‘He had enough,’ Dennis argues, although without much energy. ‘He might take the day.’

‘Hmm,’ Dee says, clearly unconvinced. ‘Well, anyway. I still think he should have cleaned his own damn room before he left. It doesn’t seem fair to leave it to us, and it’s not like you can show it as it is, without cleaning. It must be so dusty and gross.’

‘Show it?’ Dennis repeats, finally turning to look at her with a frown.

‘Yeah, you know,’ Dee says, squinting at him. ‘Showing it to potential new roommates? For when you want somebody else to move in? I thought that’s why you wanted to do this.’

Dennis can’t think of anything to say that isn’t incriminating, so he turns back to Mac’s door and doesn’t say anything at all.

‘Really, Dennis? You know can’t live here alone on Frank’s dollar forever.’

‘You do,’ he reminds her. A new roommate. A different roommate, who isn’t Mac. Someone who wouldn’t come onto Dennis all the time, or be his best friend, or want him so loudly Dennis could hear it from the next room.

‘I pay my own rent now, thank you very much,’ Dee retorts, heading over to the kitchen and rummaging around in the cupboard for cups. She has this special cup she likes to use whenever she’s over here. It has _Best Sister_ written on it in cartoonishly bright pink letters which have faded over the years. He can’t remember ever buying it for her; it just turned up one day. Dennis has the sneaking suspicion she bought it for herself. ‘Anyway, you’re avoiding the question. You should get him back in here just to clean up after himself, it’s the least he could do. You can’t show it as it is, unless you rent it to like, Cricket or something.’ She pauses. ‘Don’t rent it to Cricket.’

‘I think I can manage without,’ Dennis says, finally jerking himself away from the open door to Mac’s room. He goes over to the kitchen table and sits down with a sigh, feeling about a hundred years old. ‘I’m set in my ways, you know? I don’t know if I want anyone else coming in here, messing everything up when I have stuff the way I like it.’

‘I thought you hated living alone,’ Dee says absently, clanking around with spoons and sweetener. ‘You said in North Dakota it was like –’

‘I know what I said. Jesus,’ Dennis cuts her off, slight hiss in his voice. He massages his temples. She loves knowing it went wrong for him, she really does. It was her fault he’d spilled all about North Dakota in the first place, her fault he’d even been drinking that night when she’d pried it out of him. And now she keeps bringing it up in front of Mac and the others, casually dropping in details about how miserable Dennis had been, how he’d lived out of his suitcase the whole time he was there.

Is that why Mac went? It can’t be. Dennis didn’t – he was careful not to say anything about that, even when he was drunk. About how often he’d thought about Mac. Besides, that kind of detail would surely have prompted Mac to stay, considering.

‘I don’t want to talk about that. Go back to talking about your feud with the Korean manicurist, please.’

‘You hate hearing about my feud with the Korean manicurist,’ Dee says suspiciously.

‘Hasn’t stopped you so far.’

‘Yeah, because I thought you might actually interrupt at some point, show some signs of life.’

Dennis refuses to respond to that, out of sheer bratty protest. Dee sighs.

‘Look, for what it’s worth, I like living alone,’ she tells him. ‘I can walk around wearing whatever I want, I have the bathroom to myself, I can sing whenever I feel like it. There’s no one else ever using the stove or whatever. It’s pretty great.’

‘It’s good you feel that way, seeing as you’re going to be alone forever,’ Dennis sneers. It brings with it the familiar narcotic sensation of instant relief. Even when they were kids Dee had been good for that – it hadn’t taken Dennis long to realise that it made him feel better to pinch her after Frank said something mean to him, bitched him out for playing with dolls or whatever. And if it made Dee cry and irritated their mom into snapping at her then that was all the better. So long as he got the good attention rather than the bad, Dennis didn’t much care what he had to do. Although admittedly it had gotten harder to tell the difference as he got older.

Dee is silent for a prolonged moment so sharp Dennis half expects it to hit him in the back of the neck like an icicle dropping from the ceiling.

‘I’m gonna let you have that one, because you’re sad,’ she says, with what sounds like her full annual allowance of sisterly patience. ‘But that’s it. I don’t have to be here. Remember that.’

‘You do,’ Dennis argues. ‘The money, remember?’

‘Oh, please,’ she rolls her eyes, shoving a cup of coffee in Dennis’s general direction. ‘It’s twenty-five dollars, Dennis. We both know I didn’t have to come.’

‘Whatever,’ Dennis mumbles.

‘Not _whatever_ , look, I’m – will you pay attention for one single second, please? Will you just look at me?’

‘Okay, Jesus, what?’

Dee sits down opposite him with a full cup and a determined expression.

‘I’m saying this out of, like –’ She pulls a face. ‘If not love then maybe we could call it begrudging tolerance, or –’

‘I swear to God, I am going to put your head _through_ the table, Dee –’

‘You need to deal with your shit,’ she cuts across him bluntly. He stops talking. ‘Have you noticed that we’re only sat here today at all because you’ve managed to run off the only person who was willing to put up with you – to _live_ with you – for the last two decades? I personally do not give a shit about this freaky little game of chicken you’ve got going on, but we all really, _really_ need you to start dealing with it, and fast, ‘cause this whole situation is a fucking mess, Dennis.’ She blinks at him, eyes wide and serious. ‘It is a _real_ fucking mess.’

‘Since when do you give a single shit about Mac?’ Dennis asks in abject disbelief. ‘And his emotional state, or whatever it is you’re –’

‘I don’t! I absolutely do _not_ give a shit about Mac’s emotional state, Dennis.’ Dee buries her head in her hands for a long moment. She sighs. ‘Oh my God. Okay, if you had listened to me then you would know that I don’t care. But anyway. We all work together, as you know.’

‘As I fucking know, yes.’

‘Which means we have to be able to, you know, _work together,_ ’ Dee snaps. ‘Which is why I’m telling you to deal with your shit, Dennis, before things get any more fucked up and the atmosphere at the bar gets any weirder.’

‘What, are you speaking for Frank and Charlie now too?’

Dee just steamrolls right over him.

‘And I don’t know what dealing with it is going to look like,’ she continues. ‘Whether that means you get a new roommate and Mac’s happy with Rex, or whether Mac comes back here or what. I really don’t care. But it’s getting weird, Dennis. It’s _been_ weird for like, _years_ at this point, and it’s old, it’s really old, and –’

‘Where is this coming from?’ Dennis wonders out loud. ‘You’ve seen how gross he’s been, always hitting on me and – and now you’re what, taking his side?’

‘Yeah, but he left,’ Dee says impatiently, gesturing around at the apartment. ‘I mean yeah, sure, he’s been really irritating for the last couple of years, can’t argue that. But he actually has, like, moved out of your apartment now, so.’ She shrugs. ‘Maybe he’s not into you anymore. That’s gonna make him _way_ easier to be around.’

‘He’s been obsessed with me for years and you think that’s just gone away overnight?’ Dennis asks her, his voice low and rigid with rage. ‘You know what, don’t answer that. I don’t know why I’m even talking to you about this, you know shit about men –’

‘Like you know more than me.’ Dee rolls her eyes. ‘I’m just trying to give you some advice, Dennis. Whatever’s going on with Mac, you need to –’

‘Deal with it,’ Dennis snaps. ‘I know. I heard you the first seventeen times, Dr Phil.’

‘Did you?’ she cocks her head at him, widening her eyes so much he has the brief urge to punch her in the face just to see her blink. ‘Because it kind of seems like the message hasn’t been getting through.’

‘It got through,’ he grits out.

‘Good,’ she says pleasantly. ‘Then I think we’re done here. I’ll take my twenty-five bucks now, thanks.’

\---

It’s quiet on the drive to the bar.

It’s quiet because Dennis can listen to anything he wants – Bowie or Blondie or fucking Cyndi Lauper if the mood strikes him – without fighting about it, without having to defend his choices against someone whose idea of an appropriate soundtrack is almost always Creed (barring that hideous couple of months back in 2012 when Mac found the complete New Testament in the bargain bin at the Wawa). Dennis doesn’t have to justify himself to anyone today, so it’s perplexing that the only thing he can seem to do is drive in silence, on tenterhooks, waiting for someone else to fill the gap.

Dee should have been here. That was the plan. He wouldn’t have all this time to think if she’d just stayed and come to work with him like he’d expected her to, instead of going home to shower and change first.

‘You could shower here,’ he’d suggested when they’d finished their coffee, trying to keep his voice casual although he felt himself breaking out in a light sweat.

She’d kind of boggled at him.

‘Or I could not,’ she said slowly. ‘What would I even wear? One of Mac’s castoffs? An old pair of your jeans? As great as that sounds, I think I’m just gonna go home, where all of my actual clothes are.’

‘But –’ he started, and then folded his lips together in an attempt to stop himself begging. ‘Fine,’ he said instead, curtly. ‘See you at work.’

‘Thanks for all your help today, Dee,’ she’d sing-songed on her way out, to which Dennis had yelled ‘You’re welcome’. His heart wasn’t in it, though, because it was already happening, before she’d even really left – it was getting worse again. The apartment got bigger and emptier around him in the second it took for her to slam the door closed and Dennis couldn’t stop it, he couldn’t change it. He’d been fighting so hard all day to pretend it wasn’t going to happen and then he did nothing at all when it did: he just stood there, letting it flatten him.

He pulls up outside Paddy’s and turns off the engine, staring straight through the windshield. If he doesn’t look directly at the bar then maybe it won’t really be there. Maybe none of this will really have happened, and Mac won’t have left, and he won’t have to go in there and deal with his presence/absence, and this won’t be the day from hell. Maybe he can wake up all over again, and go into the kitchen and Mac will be there, awake and annoying but still _there,_ and Dennis won’t be happy but at least he will know what to do.

He’d really thought, when he came back from North Dakota, that things would be easier. He’d honestly believed that.

His phone beeps while he’s still sitting outside, making him jump. It’s a text from Dee.

_macs not in today, ur safe_

Dennis stares down at the text for a long time before he types a reply.

_How the hell did you get here before me?_

_better driver than you. faster driver than you_

_anyway im not actually there yet. charlie called me_

Dennis frowns down at his phone.

_Why didn’t he call me first? I’m part-owner, he should be telling me about absences, not you._

_idk dennis, im not a mindreader_

_maybe he thought you’d freak out about it_

_which_

_lol_

Dennis shoves his phone in his pocket and gets out of the car.

‘Hey, man,’ Charlie greets when he comes through the door. ‘Mac called, he’s –’

‘Not coming in today, I know,’ Dennis cuts across him, avoiding eye contact. He sets up behind the bar and starts cutting limes. 

‘Hey, uh. You wanna go in the back and get high?’ Charlie asks after a minute. Dennis can feel him watching. ‘You look kinda fucked up, dude.’

‘I’m fine,’ Dennis says automatically, swallowing against the lump in his throat. His hands still, lime juice soaking into the tiny cuts his nails had left earlier. He focuses on the sting. ‘I don’t – I can’t do that right now. Thanks. I can’t.’

‘Okay,’ Charlie says, shrugging. ‘It’s there if you want to.’

‘We open in like, half an hour,’ Dennis reminds him tersely.

‘Like that’s ever stopped us before.’

‘Yeah, but we’re gonna be short-staffed tonight, and –’

‘Okay, okay,’ Charlie rolls his eyes. ‘I take your point, you’re doing the control-freak thing today, it’s fine.’

‘I’m not doing anything,’ Dennis protests. As much as it’s just a brush-off, it feels accurate: since the moment he got up this morning, the only task of merit he’s been able to complete is fishing ten years’ worth of dust bunnies out from under the refrigerator. He can do nothing, he is nothing; he reminds himself of this periodically as he goes through the motions that night, serving drinks, wiping up spilled beer. He might as well not even be here.

\---

Luckily for Dennis, some people aren’t above finding abject despondency attractive.

‘You look like you’ve had a rough one,’ some chick says to him two hours into his shift, before taking a swig of her drink. He looks up from polishing the bar top blankly. She’s got this prepared look on her face like she’s been watching him for a while – eyebrow raised, slight smile over her drink. Vodka cranberry, from the colour. He doesn’t remember serving her. He wonders what kind of desperation she must be nursing that he looks like a viable option to her right now; he caught his reflection in the mirror last time he went for a piss and he looks like he’s spent the day face down in the backroom carpet. He wouldn’t go near himself with a ten-foot pole.

He tries to come up with a good line on principle, but he doesn’t have the energy so he just sighs and says: ‘Yes.’

She laughs, a Tinkerbell kind of twinkling thing. It’s irritating, but he could probably fuck her hard enough to get cut-off gasps rather than giggles. He surveys her, letting his gaze glide over the gauze of her blouse, her blown-out hair. She lets him look, watching him steadily. She came out looking for this, it’s written all over her face. It probably wouldn’t take much work at all to get her to go home with him, and it would be something to do tonight besides lie awake, staring at the ceiling. It would be something he could have. 

He leans forward on his elbows, lets a slow, practiced smile creep across his face. ‘What about you? Bad day?’

‘Pretty bad,’ she tells him, her smile frozen for a brief second before it segues into something more calculating; a look with a target on the end of it. For a brief second her intent is transparent enough that it almost hurts – this is so clearly not about Dennis, not at all, and just once he’d like it if it was – but that small pain is so quickly subsumed by the larger one that it barely registers. So what if this isn’t really about Dennis? It’s not about her for him, either. He’ll take what he can get. He’ll take the warm body, the grasping hands, even if she doesn’t know who she’s reaching for. It’s not like it will cost him anything he hasn’t already lost.

‘Why don’t you tell me about it?’ he asks her, leaning in a little closer, close enough to see the shine on her teeth as she smiles.

\---

They’re quiet on the drive back to the apartment.

They’ve been driving for five minutes before Dennis realises no music is playing, and he can’t bring himself to start flicking through radio stations. After a few attempts to start a conversation which Dennis only responds to with monosyllables, Gemma – Geri? Jennifer? Something with a G, or a J – starts fidgeting with her bag strap, pulling at the hem of her skirt in small, uncomfortable movements. Dennis is dimly aware that he should be talking more. He reminds himself that the chase doesn’t end when the woman gets into the car. He used to enjoy this part a lot more than he does now: the anticipation of seduction, refining and concretising his power over another person. He should be joking around, complimenting her, figuring out exactly the right buttons to press so she wants his approval the most – he should just generally be making more of an effort to reassure her that getting into his car wasn’t a terrible idea, but he can’t seem to summon up the energy. She’s here now, isn’t that enough? She’s here in his car, in the passenger seat, and they’re heading back to the apartment.

_His_ apartment.

Everything is fine.

All the same, it’s a little concerning – the gulf between how much he wants to enjoy this and how much he actually is. There’s nothing in his head right now but weariness, no anticipation of the slow seduction to follow. He can’t even picture having sex with her. He can only picture lying there, and something happening to him, and then being alone again. The thought of her leaving before morning lands like a block of ice in his stomach and he manages to clear his throat, bracing to ask her a question so that she won’t brush him off when they get to the apartment, so that she won’t leave, and he won’t be alone.

But then she turns to look at him, face relieved and expectant, and he – can’t. He just can’t. There are no words inside him, or at least none he can speak. He gives her a weak smile and turns to look back at traffic. At this point the silence in the Range Rover feels almost insanely oppressive, and Dennis feels stupid for having gone to all this effort to hook her – the first time he’s successfully done so in a very, very long time – and now he can’t even work up the energy to ask her about her job, or does she live around here, or does she work out at the gym a few blocks away? He doesn’t give a shit about any of that. He can’t even remember this woman’s name.

It would be a lot easier if she were a dude, he thinks, not for the first time. Not in the sense that like, the sex would be easier. He’s only ever had sex with women, so he assumes that it wouldn’t be, at least not the first time. It probably depends on the other guy. But that’s not what he means, he means more like, he enjoys manipulating women into going home with him because it involves the exercise of a particular set of skills which he’s honed over the years, and every time it works it’s satisfying in a way which doesn’t even particularly chime as sexual. It’s just _good_ – good to be wanted, good to be good at something. There’s something gratifying about having to work to get their attention which doesn’t come up in his interactions with men. He just knows guys, so he doesn’t have to pay as much attention to their bodily cues, and he doesn’t have to watch what he says like he does with women.

He never had to work that hard to attract Mac, for instance. Dennis didn’t have to work for Mac to want him, not at all. He didn’t have to do anything out of the ordinary. Mac had wanted him for exactly who he was.

‘Are you – crying?’

‘What?’ Dennis jolts at the sound of Gemma’s voice; he’d mostly forgotten she was in the car with him. He touches his face on reflex and is momentarily paralysed to find out she’s right. He’s crying. He’s sat here in his Range Rover next to a pretty woman who’s willing to have sex with him and he’s crying, tears rolling down his face without him even making a sound. ‘Fuck. I don’t – sorry, this happens sometimes –’

‘What do you mean, this happens sometimes?’ she asks, sounding alarmed. ‘Are you okay? I thought – I thought you wanted, you were like –’

‘I _do_ ,’ he tells her, injecting it with faux-neediness; trying to laugh it off. ‘It’s fine, look –’

‘It doesn’t really seem fine,’ she says unhappily. ‘Are you okay? Do you like, need me to call someone?’

‘No, no,’ Dennis insists, hastily wiping a hand across his face. ‘No, I’m fine, I promise, it’s just – it’s allergies.’

‘Allergies,’ she repeats sceptically. ‘From – your car?’

‘Hey, are you a doctor?’ he asks, looking at her quickly. She’s retreated more into her side of the car, watching him warily. He turns back to the road, changing gears with more force than was really necessary. ‘Because if not, I’d thank you to keep your medical assessments to yourself.’

‘Jesus,’ she says, sounding pissed off now. ‘Fine. You know what, this was a bad idea. You can just let me out anytime, anywhere around here, okay?’

‘What?’ he asks, alarmed. ‘No, you don’t need – you don’t need to go, I’m sorry, I was just caught off guard –’

‘I’d like you to let me out, please,’ she says again, quietly.

He looks over. Her hand is poised on the door handle, wrist shaking almost imperceptibly; her lips are set in a thin line as she stares steadily at the road in front of them.

Dennis shuts his mouth and pulls over to the side of the road, ignoring the honking behind him.

‘Look, I’m sorry. Do you want me to call you an U –’

‘No. Goodnight,’ Gemma says, her voice shaking as she slams the door behind her.

Dennis watches her walk off up the street, duck into a brightly lit bar with her phone already clapped to her ear. He lets his head fall back against the seat and stares at the door, contemplating the possibility of her coming back out, or maybe following her inside to explain himself. This chimes dimly in the back of his mind as a creepy train of thought that he should pull back from, so he discards it, but he still can’t quite make himself drive away. If he could get her to come back to the apartment with him then this won’t have happened: there won’t be a person walking around out there with this warped perception of him as someone pathetic, someone who sits in their car next to a beautiful girl and cries.

But it gets later and later and colder and colder in his car, sat out on the curb in the dark, and she still doesn’t come out of the club. Eventually Dennis turns the engine back on and peels off into the blissfully empty 3am road. He drives back to his gutted apartment in something like a fugue state, his resounding failure echoing through his entire body, circling back over and over again to the fact that it hasn’t even been one full day since Mac left.

Not even one full day.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> everyone's been so nice about this so far, it's honestly made my week <3 hope y'all like this one!

Dennis sees Mac the next morning, getting out of Rex’s car outside Paddy’s.

Mac’s smiling; they’re both smiling. He slaps Rex’s hand before he gets out and directs one last comment over his shoulder. It must be a joke because it makes Rex laugh, body folding over the steering wheel. Dennis imagines the plastic digging into the soft flesh of Rex’s stomach. Has he gained weight in his face, too? Dee had told him it was mostly just the gut, that he’d hidden it under his clothes. Is that what Mac wants? Someone to compare himself to that won’t make him feel unworthy? Is that why he left?

Mac doesn’t see Dennis, who’s sitting inside the Range Rover parked a little way down the street, trying to look inconspicuous. He’s been camped out here for hours, determined not to rely on anyone else’s information about whether or not Mac was coming in today. He had to see it for himself.

And now here he is, seeing it. Sat frozen in his car, eyes burning from less than three hours sleep, paused with his reusable coffee cup halfway to his lips as if someone slammed his off-button. Spying on Mac like some pathetic jilted ex.

Mac looks good. He looks awake, alert, ready to start the day. The way he _smiles_ at Rex is different – there’s nothing behind it. It says Rex is easy to be around, easy to smile at. There’s no burden of history there. No caution.

Mac doesn’t see Dennis. He waves goodbye to Rex then goes into Paddy’s. He doesn’t even look around.

Dennis sits there for a long time before he starts the engine and drives home.

\---

The next day, he’s back in exactly the same position at the same fucking time, just with a slightly worse headache. He sits outside Paddy’s in the Range Rover for half an hour after he should have gone in, wondering how long he can take advantage of the gang’s inability to keep to regular time.

Dee had been the only one to call when he hadn’t turned up yesterday. ‘I know you’re like, going through it right now but you can’t just leave us like this,’ she’d hissed into his voicemail. ‘No one’s gonna be on your side if you act like an asshole about it.’

He vaguely remembers the anger and worry in her voice, but it had been two in the morning by then and he’d been so drunk that he could barely see, let alone sift through complex emotions. As if Dee had any right to lecture him, anyway. She has no idea what Dennis is going through, of that he’s sure; she’s always lived alone, she’s had no long-term relationships. She has to be used to the idea that nobody wants her by now.

‘You can do this,’ he tells himself, feeling like an idiot but needing to hear it said out loud anyway. He’s had one hand on his seatbelt for the last five minutes. The weather is shitty. He’s going to have to cover his head while he runs inside and even then, his hair is going to get wet. Did Rex drive Mac to work again today so he didn’t get caught in the rain? Is that what they do now? Yesterday could be excused on the grounds that Mac had only just moved in and doesn’t have his own car, but if Rex keeps doing it then that means something, doesn’t it? It means Rex has the time and the inclination to ferry Mac around, the pathetic desire to be helpful. Mac had told Dennis it wasn’t like that, that him and Rex weren’t together, but driving somebody to work every day is something a boyfriend would do. It implies commitment and routine.

Unless you both work at the same establishment, obviously. Then it’s just good sense.

Dennis breathes in and out carefully. In, out. In, out. The rain taps against the windshield but it’s not soft, not in a comforting rhythm. Mac used to put a hand on his sternum when Dennis needed to concentrate on his breathing, so that Dennis could focus on the weight of it while his chest lifted and fell with his deep breaths. Used to, until Dennis started smacking him away.

‘You can do this,’ he says again to the empty car, like an idiot. ‘It’s going to be fine.’

He takes another deep breath, and then he gets out of the car.

Dee’s the only person there when he gets inside, stood behind the bar with a rack of glasses in front of her ready for polishing. She’s ignoring them in favour of her phone, tapping away with a slightly manic expression on her face.

She looks up at the sound of the door and double takes at the sight of him.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ she says, sounding pleased. She raises her voice to a holler. ‘ _Frank!_ ’

‘Yeah, yeah, I heard it,’ Frank grumbles, ambling out of the backroom. He sighs, wordlessly reaching into his back pocket. He pulls out a twenty and hands it to Dee, who takes it with a showy bow and a smug grin.

‘Great,’ Dennis says flatly. ‘Thanks. What was that for, exactly?’

‘We bet on whether or not you’d bail again,’ Frank tells him, without an ounce of shame. ‘Dee said you’d go nuts any longer on your own, but I thought you’d bottle it. Didn’t think you’d have the balls.’

Dennis folds his arms across his chest, scanning the rest of the bar quickly. There’s no visible sign that Mac’s been in so far today – and Dennis would be surprised, considering the hour – but he feels on edge anyway, braced for impact at any moment. ‘Did Charlie partake?’

‘Nope,’ Dee tells him, going back to her phone. ‘Charlie doesn’t give a shit. Direct quote.’

‘Where is he?’ Dennis asks.

Dee shoots him a look. He raises an eyebrow, refusing to concede.

‘Do you mean: where’s everyone else?’ Dee asks drily. ‘Charlie’s down in the basement, working on one of his weird traps. Boy needs to get a hobby.’

‘Right.’ Dennis pauses. ‘And –’

‘And what?’ Dee cocks her head innocently, giving him a quizzical look.

Dennis has a brief but satisfying fantasy about shoving her head into the mirror behind the bar.

‘What about Mac?’ he asks. He has only a little trouble getting the name out. ‘I’m only asking because we need to get back up to speed, obviously. Things have been all over the place lately. We have to get our heads back in the game.’

Dee snorts.

‘A bold statement from someone whose head has literally never been further from the game.’

‘Oh, like you can talk.’ Dennis nods at Dee’s fingers, already flying across the screen of her phone again. ‘What’s got you so excited all of a sudden? Anyone’d think something was actually happening in your life.’

Dee rolls her eyes and doesn’t bother answering. Dennis frowns. It’s not like her to accept to a jab like that without a fight.

‘Christ,’ Frank mutters. He shifts on his feet, addressing Dennis warily. ‘Mac’s not here yet, said he’d be along later. Still got some crap to sort out, back at Rex’s. That make you happy?’

‘It’s fine,’ Dennis says shortly. He’s unable to stop himself imagining what that might entail – is Rex helping Mac curate his pathetic wardrobe? Are they discussing split payment of the bills? When the hell is _later?_ ‘I’m going to go – make some coffee. Don’t bother me.’

‘Wouldn’t dream of it,’ Dee murmurs.

\---

The morning drags into afternoon, every minute seeming like an hour. There was a point in Dennis’s life during which his day started when Mac appeared, and he’s irritated to find himself pulled back into that routine of looking up every time the door opens, heart speeding up at the sound of each new voice, and then slumping when it’s not the one he wants to hear. It’s ludicrous for him to be so tense, he’s aware of that. What does he think is going to happen when Mac appears? A Mexican stand-off complete with pistols and a dramatic soundtrack? But he can’t control it – Mac has infiltrated his thought patterns to a truly debilitating degree, and the only thing he can be thankful for now is that he doesn’t have friends considerate enough to notice how upset he is and make him talk about it.

Something happened to him in North Dakota, something a little like this. It started creeping in after a couple of weeks, when the novelty was wearing off. About once a day he’d be randomly struck by the thought of what Mac was doing – if he was out, at the bar, meeting people. Was he happy? What did he look like now? He couldn’t be left alone for five minutes without altering his appearance in some major way, and Dennis was dogged by the persistent fear that even in North Dakota he might somehow run into Mac on the street and not recognise him. That Mac might walk right past him and Dennis wouldn’t even know.

He’d left Mac that number to the mental health phoneline as a parting shot that he got less proud of the longer he thought about it, but it wasn’t as if he could take it back. He couldn’t call anyone; he couldn’t talk to any of them. They had to call him first. That was how it should work.

But they didn’t.

Dee bangs an empty tray down on the bar. Dennis jumps.

‘Jesus, Dee. Are you trying to give me a heart attack?’

‘Remember what I said the other day?’ she demands. ‘About things getting weird? Well, this is officially weird. You’ve skipped the playlist back to John Waite like, ten times in a row, Dennis. No one wants to listen to ‘Missing You’ that many times. _Please_ go and take a break.’

‘It’s a good song,’ Dennis mutters, avoiding her eye. He hadn’t realised he’d skipped it back _that_ many times.

‘Not that good,’ Dee says shortly, and shoves him in the direction of the door. ‘Get some air, asshole.’

Dennis goes.

He lounges back against the wall outside the bar with a sigh, shivering without his jacket. He decides he might as well smoke if he’s going to be exiled out here, as much for the warmth as anything else. But while he finds the crumpled pack of cigarettes in the back pocket of his jeans, of course he can’t find his lighter.

He’s still rummaging around for it, cursing under his breath and getting increasingly irate, when he hears Mac’s voice say, ‘Hey.’

Dennis freezes.

He looks up cautiously. Mac looks exactly the same, of course; just as wary and hopeful as the last time Dennis saw him. He’s wearing his stupid Gym and Tonic t shirt and his leather jacket. The look on his face is so familiar that it’s hard for Dennis to look directly at him, so he averts his eyes to a spot on the sidewalk just over Mac’s left shoulder.

‘Hi,’ he says back, stupidly. He’s been rehearsing this moment in his head for the last two days and now it’s actually happening, he can’t think of a single thing to say. Not one goddamn thing.

Mac is watching him closely; Dennis can feel it. The stroke of Mac’s attention along his cheekbones. He can’t look because if he does then Mac might pick up on something or – misinterpret something. He might notice that Dennis looks like shit and decide it means something it doesn’t.

‘So, uh.’ Mac clears his throat. ‘How’s work? Is it busy tonight?’

‘No,’ Dennis says, voice flat. He fumbles a cigarette out of the packet, sets it between his lips and goes to light it before he remembers he doesn’t have his lighter. He’s immobilised with humiliation for a second, heartbeat throbbing through his entire body, before he pulls the cigarette out of his mouth and shoves it in his pocket. He feels his cheeks burning.

Mac doesn’t seem to notice, thank God. He’s too busy opening and closing his mouth, clearly trying to come up with something to say.

‘Cat got your tongue?’ Dennis asks. He can hear the meanness in his own voice and he wishes he could stop but it’s instinct, by this point. It’s not all his fault. Mac’s complicit in it, he always has been – he expects it from Dennis, and if there’s one thing Dennis knows how to do, it’s perform for a captive audience.

Mac’s mouth twists a little; angry, even if he’s not really surprised.

‘I hate it too, you know,’ he says. It’s so honest that Dennis’s back immediately straightens, flattening him against the cold brick wall. Mac glares at him, fists clenched at his sides as if he’d ever have the balls to actually take a swing. ‘I never wanted – ugh, this is hard. Look, I _like_ living with you, man. If you could just – get your head out of your ass –’

‘God, you’re pathetic,’ Dennis half-chokes out. It stops Mac cold, eyes wide. Dennis swallows and forces more words out. ‘You think I miss you, is that it? You think I’m – lying awake at night, wishing you’d come back?’

‘I didn’t say –’

‘ _You’re_ the one who left and yet _you’re_ the one who’s begging me to –’

‘I’m not begging you to do anything!’ Mac interrupts, outraged. ‘I’m trying to have a real conversation, Dennis, but clearly –’

‘You only want to talk to me so that you can convince yourself I want you back,’ Dennis retorts. His voice has gone icy and mocking, snake-like. It’s fitting, considering how low he feels to the ground right now. ‘You barely even need me here. You might as well talk to yourself.’

‘It’d make more sense that way,’ Mac snaps. ‘I don’t even know why I bother, man, I really don’t.’

‘Yes, you do,’ Dennis hisses. ‘You _know_ why, you –’

‘Shut up,’ Mac nearly shouts. ‘God, for once just – shut _up_.’

Dennis’s mouth tightens, heart hammering in his chest. He’s holding his eyes open wide, wide as he can handle, because he can feel the tears gathering and he’s not going to fucking do it, he can’t do it in front of Mac. He can’t give him that. He can’t.

Mac runs a hand over his head, fucking up his hair. He looks exhausted, although he didn’t when he arrived. Dennis has managed to drain the life out of him in less than five minutes; it might be a personal best.

‘So is this how it’s going to be now?’ Mac asks, the tone of his voice desperate for Dennis to contradict him. ‘All fucked up and – yelling at each other all the time? Is this it?’

Dennis leans his head back against the wall and closes his eyes.

‘Don’t kid yourself,’ he says tiredly. ‘It’s been fucked up for a lot longer than this.’

He hears Mac’s breath hitching and keeps his eyes clamped shut. Mac isn’t allowed to cry either; Dennis can’t watch that. It’s not what he signed up for.

But then Mac says, ‘Okay,’ and he doesn’t sound like he’s crying. He sounds tired, so tired he could drop where he stands. He gives a shaky laugh, nothing funny in it at all. ‘Yeah, I guess so. I’ll – I’ll see you in there, Dennis.’

Dennis keeps his eyes closed while Mac goes past him into the bar. He’s careful not to touch Dennis at all. His jacket doesn’t even brush Dennis’s arm.

Dennis doesn’t follow him.

\---

The thing is, part of Dennis has always been waiting for Mac to leave.

He knew it when they were kids, barely out of puberty. When he came back from college and he’d managed to convince himself that he’d only be taking a break, that he’d go back eventually – even then he knew. Mac and Charlie had just been hanging out the whole time, waiting for Dennis and Dee to get back, like they’d hit pause on their lives until they could all be together again. Dennis knew it was fucked up, in a way, to need each other that much. It wasn’t normal. But he couldn’t find a way to stop it that wouldn’t hurt, and over time it stopped seeming important to try. 

If he digs hard enough, he can remember the first time it really hit him that Mac existed as a separate entity in the world. Mac came to visit him at college one weekend, freshman year.

‘Did you hitch a ride with a pig farmer or something, dude?’ Dennis had asked, to try and hide how pleased he was to see him. ‘You smell like shit.’

‘And you look like an asshole,’ Mac had told him, but he’d been grinning and God, his eyes were bright.

Dennis had shut it down as soon as he thought it, but his body hadn’t gotten the memo and it was hard, when they went to a party that night, not to touch him – grab his arm, throw an arm around his shoulder. They were a unit, just the two of them; Mac had come up without Charlie. They were together in a crowd of strangers, and they could be anything they wanted. Dennis really believed that, back then.

A couple of times, Dennis noticed girls at the party giving Mac looks out the corner of their eye, exchanging giggling whispers behind their hands. Mac wasn’t a beefcake by any means – he was sweet if he was anything, cute and lean. A real entitled asshole if you talked to him long enough, obviously. But he was pretty, Dennis had to concede that. He had good hair.

‘You have good hair,’ Dennis told him, slurring his words, ruffling a hand through said hair as he gesticulated with his beer. Mac’s bangs flopped over Dennis’s fingers, shiny and soft.

Mac rolled his eyes and ducked his head, swatting at Dennis with a complete lack of coordination. He was blushing. That happened so often that it had to mean something, but Dennis was still toying with what. Was it a general thing, with dudes? Or was it just Dennis? Dennis could make that happen to Mac’s face without even thinking about it; it was like a superpower. He always knew exactly what to say.

They went up onto the roof of Dennis’s dorm and smoked the weed Dennis got from a guy in his Intro to Psych class, and they stared at the sky. Dennis kept thinking about the way those girls had looked at Mac, in a way he’d never really seen them do before. At school everyone had known Mac for what he was – grubbed up drug dealer, dad in the slammer, mom who didn’t give a shit. Dennis had taken pity on him. Dennis was the one people looked at, back then.

The scene unrolled in front of Dennis in a drugged-up haze, so alien it made him nauseous: Mac meeting a girl, setting up somewhere far away from him, outside Dennis’s sphere of influence. Getting married, having kids. Leaving him.

It had never occurred to him before that Mac might one day be necessary to someone other than him – that he could have a life outside Dennis. The thought scared him so much that he ended up clutching the flat cold concrete of the roof like he was on a rollercoaster.

Dennis knew there was something wrong with him; he always had. It was a truth embedded at the base of his consciousness, impervious to love. But there was something wrong with Mac, too – it was the thing that made them right together, the thing that made Mac stay. What if somebody else could overlook that? What if Dennis had been wrong, all this time?

\---

No matter how many times Dennis tells her he doesn’t want to hear it, Dee keeps insisting that there are at least some aspects of living alone which he should be able to enjoy.

‘You lived alone in North Dakota, right?’ she reminds him, with an elbow to the ribs which she presumably intends to be friendly. ‘Just do what you did there.’

‘Yeah, well,’ Dennis says stiffly. ‘I did come back from North Dakota, if you’ve noticed.’

His discomfort with the topic is eased by how the line of Mac’s back has gone tense, all the way across the bar from their conversation. Mac is pretending to read something on his phone, but he hasn’t scrolled down the screen for the last five minutes. Dennis has been paying a lot of attention lately to the angles of Mac’s body, seeing as how he rarely gets any closer to him than this. He’s gotten pretty good at reading the set of Mac’s shoulders from ten feet away.

It’s been a real fun week.

‘Yeah, but that was just because the whole being a dad thing didn’t work out,’ Dee continues, unperturbed by the way Dennis bristles. ‘You really lucked out of that one, right?’

Dennis takes a long pull on his beer and doesn’t answer. _Lucked out_. Is that the right term for it? Brian Junior is definitely better off not having Dennis as a father, but that doesn’t mean Dennis is better off knowing that.

Dee clears her throat. ‘So anyway, now you don’t have any responsibilities to worry about and you can just, you know, chill. Enjoy the bachelor lifestyle.’

‘Right,’ he says distantly. He’s spent every morning for the past week promising himself that he’ll find a better coping mechanism than drinking himself to sleep, and every night going back on his promise. Would that fit the definition of ‘bachelor lifestyle’? ‘It’s – look, Dee, it’s fine, can we just – I’m fine on my own, I’m doing fine. I don’t need your advice.’

Mac’s snort of disbelief travels all the way across the bar.

‘What was that?’ Dennis snaps. ‘Got something to say, Mac?’

Mac pretends not to hear him, still staring at his phone.

‘Have you shown the apartment to anyone yet?’ Dee asks, a hint of steel in her voice. Her eyes have gone weirdly bright in that familiar way which suggests that if Dennis makes her acknowledge the tension in the room, she’s going to ram it straight down his throat. ‘Have you even advertised?’

‘I told you I didn’t need your advice,’ Dennis reminds her with a glare. He clears his throat. ‘Besides, I’m actually thinking about relocating.’

This is complete bullshit, but it pays off: Mac finally spins around on his stool, fixing Dennis with a look of disbelief.

‘You’re moving out of the apartment?’ he asks, as if Dennis just announced a plan to move to Reno and sell used cars. ‘You can’t do that, dude. It’s the _apartment._ That place was a steal, we always said so.’

‘ _You_ always said so,’ Dennis counters, unfairly. They have always said that, because it’s true. But as always, it’s more rewarding to see Mac’s jaw working in indignation than it is to tell the truth. ‘And it would be pretty easy for you to say that, wouldn’t it, when you never even bothered to pay me your share of the rent?’

‘I paid you back in labour,’ Mac argues. He doesn’t look one hundred percent convinced about this himself, even as the words come out of his mouth. ‘I bought groceries. I paid you in – other things, Dennis.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ Dee says, throwing down the rag she was using to polish glasses and storming off. Dennis doesn’t care where. His heart is racing; he feels more alive than he has done in days. Mac is _looking_ at him.

‘You paid me shit,’ Dennis retorts. ‘You’re just a freeloader, like you always have been.’

Mac gets up off his stool, scowling. A vicious thrill sparks through Dennis’s stomach as he comes closer, close enough that Dennis could reach out and touch.

‘Maybe if you weren’t such a tightass about everything, I would’ve tried harder to pay you back for stuff,’ Mac says, folding his arms across his chest.

He’s close enough now that he’s almost in between Dennis’s legs, staring down at him with narrowed eyes; Dennis wouldn’t be able to stand up from his stool without really getting in Mac’s space. He can feel the heat of Mac’s body. It’s been so long since Mac has been like this with him – really been in the room with him, fought back like it matters – that Dennis is nearly squirming in his seat.

‘I’m not a tightass,’ he argues. Mac’s eyes flicker down to his mouth and Dennis loses his train of thought for a second. He clears his throat and Mac’s eyes flicker back up. ‘When have I ever – I let you on my cell phone plan, Mac. I let you use my gym membership. I bought your _clothes._ I always let you cut more keys when you lost yours – probably half the city has a key to our fucking apartment by now –’

‘ _Your_ fucking apartment,’ Mac corrects him. ‘It’s not our apartment anymore.’

Dennis’s jaw clenches. That one stings.

‘Fine,’ he snaps, genuinely angry now. ‘My apartment, probably half the city has a key to _my_ apartment, is that better?’

‘Yeah,’ Mac says snidely. ‘That’s great, thanks.’

‘I’m better off without you as a roommate anyway. At least I don’t have to put up with your fucking dildo bike shaking the walls, listening to you moaning and groaning every hour of the goddamn day.’

‘Yeah? Well at least at Rex’s I don’t have someone nagging me all the time, whining about the state of my room.’

‘Because it was a fucking _sty,_ Mac! You should have been ashamed of yourself, a grown man living like that –’

‘I never asked you to go in there,’ Mac fumes. ‘It was none of your goddamn business, and anyway you’re no Martha Stewart. Things _grew_ in the coffee cups when it was your turn to clean up the kitchen, Dennis! You created _life_ –’

‘Only when I was trying to teach you a lesson about taking responsibility for your own mess, Mac. Those were _your_ coffee cups –’

‘Out of the two of us, which one drinks coffee, Dennis? Hmm? Because I can tell you right now, it isn’t –’

‘Oh my _God_ , shut up,’ comes Charlie’s voice from somewhere behind Mac.

Dennis jumps. He hadn’t even remembered Charlie was in here.

Mac shoots him a furtive look which strongly implies he’d forgotten too, and then they’re both reddening slightly and looking away. Dennis clears his throat, trying not to let his gaze linger on the way Mac’s hands are clenched into fists at his sides, his chest rising and falling rapidly with his angry breaths. If Dennis could just bottle this, the surge of adrenaline rushing through him right now, then he’d have something, when he’s alone in the apartment – something to wake him up and make him feel alive, something that reminds him –

‘For the love of God,’ Charlie continues, poking his head around the side of a booth. ‘I will pay you – I will pay _both_ of you to either shut up or take this somewhere else.’

‘You don’t have any money,’ Dennis reminds him, without dragging his eyes away from the line of Mac’s tensed shoulders. Mac is still glaring off into space, refusing to look at him.

‘How would you know? Are you my wallet?’

Before Dennis can reply, Dee comes marching out of the back room, letting the door crash closed behind her.

‘Okay, suckers,’ she announces. ‘Everybody stop talking. We’re going to fix this before the two of you drive me insane.’

Mac and Dennis exchange mistrustful expressions.

‘How the fuck are we going to do that?’ Mac asks, frowning.

Dee grins.

\---

‘I want it known that I don’t feel good about this,’ Dennis says. He folds his arms across his chest and sneaks a look at Mac. He’s stood on the opposite side of the easel, which loudly proclaims: MCDONALD VS. REYNOLDS: THE WORST ROOMMATE DEBATE in hot pink block letters. The judge had chosen the colour. ‘Not because I think I’m going to lose. Obviously, I’m going to win. I just object to my privacy being invaded like this.’

‘You’re not going to win,’ Mac says shortly. ‘Also, this whole situation is fucked. I want that noted in the minutes.’

‘Stop complaining,’ Frank orders. ‘You know there are no minutes. Besides, we’re doing this, you were outvoted.’

‘And God knows, we love democracy around here,’ Artemis pipes up, settling in her seat.

She looks pretty happy up there on the makeshift throne they constructed for her. She should do – it was her only condition when she agreed to act as judge, but she’d stipulated that it had to be a _fancy_ throne, which had given Mac carte blanche to go a little crazy with the old cans of gold spray paint they’d dug out of a box in the basement. The throne is an uneven construction of various chairs balanced on top of each other in a pyramid stack; Mac had to help her up there and now that she’s seated Dennis doubts she’ll be moving any time soon. The whole situation is held together with craft glue and pure optimism, but Artemis seems content enough and seeing as she’s the one in danger, Dennis isn’t going to complain. 

‘I don’t think I’d call this democracy,’ Dennis argues. He gets instantly shouted down by a chorus of boos, including a loud ‘for God’s _sake’_ from Dee’s direction. ‘Alright, Jesus, fine.’

Mac sighs. ‘It’s not worth it,’ he says flatly. ‘Face it, bro. We’re outnumbered.’

Dennis shifts on the balls of his feet. He preferred it when they were ready to punch each other, rather than have everybody watching them like this.

‘Don’t try to psych me out,’ he warns Mac. ‘Remember every game of CharDee MacDennis since the dawn of time? I’m gonna beat you, man. That’s just how this is gonna go.’

Mac rolls his eyes. ‘God, you’re paranoid.’ He cocks his head, voice going lofty like it always does when two of his brain cells meet up and decide to invent original thought. ‘It’s actually one of your worst qualities as a roommate.’

He strolls over to talk to Artemis, no doubt to try and bias her in his favour. She leans eagerly down from her trashy throne to listen, her eyes lingering on the way Mac’s t-shirt strains against his biceps.

Dennis watches, wondering if he should undo a couple of buttons or something, start rolling up his sleeves. He just can’t compete with Mac’s muscle mass these days, that’s the trouble. Dennis is lithe and neat, not hypermasculine and in-your-face. He doesn’t pop his shirt off at the drop of a hat the way he used to. Mac doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo about that.

Artemis laughs at something Mac says, trailing her fingers over his shoulders. Dennis frowns. It’s not like Mac’s in danger of actually banging Artemis to win the arbitration, but he can certainly flirt his way around it, and that gives him an unfair advantage. After that thing with Gemma or Jennifer or whatever last week, Dennis is in no hurry to try his luck seducing another woman any time soon. He feels queasy just thinking about it.

‘Okay, before we start,’ Artemis announces as Mac strolls back over to the easel, ‘I want everyone to remember we’re here to have fun, okay?’

Dee puts her hand up and doesn’t wait for Artemis to give permission before she speaks. ‘Actually, we’re not really here to have fun. We’re here to solve a dispute, so if you could just –’

‘Let me rephrase: _I_ am here to have fun,’ Artemis proclaims, with a slightly more determined grin. ‘I don’t know what the rest of you assholes are doing here, but whatever. Let’s get started.’

‘I want it on the record that I’m still uncomfortable with this, before we begin,’ Dennis reminds the assembled witnesses, which are scattered across a seating area meant for twenty people: Frank, leg up on the chair next to him and digging away with his toe knife; Dee, poised and expectant with her phone outstretched to record the arbitration; Charlie, who is sulking and refusing to make eye contact because neither Mac nor Dennis would let him act as their lawyer. They’d tried calling Cricket and Rex to bulk up the numbers, but Cricket hadn’t answered, and Mac said Rex had some kind of addicts anonymous meeting to go to.

Dennis had wondered through the fog of his irritation with the proceedings what exactly a good boy like Rex thought he was so addicted to, but he hadn’t bothered to ask. The visceral loathing he experiences every time Mac mentions Rex’s name is unsettling, even for him. The first couple of times he’d heard Mac talk about him in a roommate capacity, Dennis couldn’t even form a sentence, he was so choked with rage and disgust. It isn’t just the offhand way Mac says his name when he talks about a movie they went to see or a new workout Rex has been helping him put together, but the way the rest of the gang just nods along at the mention of his name, as if there isn’t anything fundamentally flawed about this new arrangement. They seem _happy_ for Mac. They don’t feel the wrongness of it the way Dennis does, down to his bones, like nails on a chalkboard.

He stares out at their ragged audience. Why didn’t he leave as soon as Dee suggested this bullshit plan? It’s no one else’s job to arbitrate Mac and Dennis’s relationship, fucked up though it may be. Why has he given this shitshow his tacit approval by sticking around instead of dragging Mac off by the short hairs and talking about it somewhere else? Not that he really wants to talk about it. Not that even knows where they’d go. Sometimes it seems like there could be nowhere far enough that it might qualify as neutral ground.

He shoots a glance at Mac and is surprised to find Mac already looking at him. Dennis doesn’t immediately jerk his gaze away like he’s become so accustomed to doing, so they end up just staring at each other for a long moment. Dennis has the impulse to say something, but he has no idea what.

Before he can figure it out, Artemis bangs her makeshift gavel against the plank of plywood taped to the arms of her chair.

‘Order – oh, Christ –’

Her voice goes squeaky as the throne wobbles dangerously. Mac shoots across the room to hold it steady, his eyes wide with alarm. Dennis sympathises: if one more person gets grievously injured in the bar, their insurance premium is going to go through the _roof_.

‘It’s fine, it’s fine,’ Artemis waves him away after a moment, voice returning to its normal cool. ‘We all gotta go sometime, right? Anyway, like I said, order!’

‘Can we maybe hold off a sec?’ Mac asks quietly. ‘Cause I think Dennis might have just been about to –’

Dennis feels Artemis look over at him speculatively.

‘We don’t need to wait,’ Dennis interrupts. He ignores the way Mac turns to frown at him, and the sick feeling in his stomach. How, Dennis wonders, can he possibly be surprised? ‘I’m fine, we can get started.’

It’s going to be fine, he tries to tell himself as they go back to their opposing sides of the easel. He might even win this, if he really tries.

\---

‘And that’s not even counting the most recent time you went running through my wardrobe looking for stuff to deface, okay, Mac? You’re a grown man who can’t even buy his own goddamn clothes, that’s God’s honest truth, and it’s _pathetic_ –’

‘Like I’d want any of your castoffs,’ Mac scoffs. ‘Wouldn’t even fit me at this point. I’ve been buying my own shirts for years, Dennis.’

‘Do you understand how ridiculous that is? Do you even hear yourself? Like, you’re actually proud of that statement. I can’t even tell you how –’

‘Is it any more ridiculous than someone who has to be reminded to eat three goddamn meals a day, Dennis?’

‘I watch my weight because I _care_ about my body, Mac.’ Dennis sets his jaw, seething. ‘And I don’t need you wading in to try and look after me like I’m some kind of fucking imbecile.’

‘You _are_ a fucking –’

‘Somebody please shut them up before I throw myself off this throne,’ Artemis hollers, banging her gavel so loudly that everybody winces.

Dennis catches Mac’s eye and they look away in unison. Mac’s face is all screwed up with frustration and anger, and Dennis can hear the blood pumping in his own ears. It’s not fun like it was earlier, not satisfying; instead he just feels like he’s laying out the worst of them in front of an audience of their closest friends, who are eating it up like primetime entertainment. It feels so wrong Dennis could scream. He doesn’t want this to be about anyone else. It has to be about them, or what’s the point?

‘Jesus Christ,’ Artemis continues. She whistles, loud and shrill. It jerks Frank out of his nap and he looks around, clearly confused. ‘Hey, Frank. Are they always like this?’

Frank takes a moment to survey Mac and Dennis’s body language – both standing rigid with their arms folded across their chests, staring off into opposite corners of the room.

‘Yep,’ he says. ‘Pretty much. These days, anyway.’

Artemis sighs.

‘I don’t think we’re getting anywhere here, people,’ she tells the assembled witnesses. ‘We need new input.’

‘Yes, I agree,’ Dee volunteers. ‘I actually was hoping that you’d ask, because I have a lot of thoughts on how this situation is affecting the dynamic of the entire group, and as Frank’s number two, I consider it my responsibility –’

‘You’re not number two,’ Mac objects, frowning. ‘You lost it to Charlie last month after you let the garbage spill out of the dumpster, remember? And it attracted all those raccoons?’

‘I still don’t think that’s fair, considering the lengths Charlie went to trying to domesticate one as a pet,’ Dee argues. ‘Really, I was doing him a favour.’

‘But you didn’t _intend_ to do him a favour when you let the garbage spill everywhere,’ Dennis points out. ‘We prioritised intention over outcome the last time we looked over the rulebook, remember?’ He pauses. ‘Plus, you’re an annoying bitch. Pipe down.’

Dee blinks at him.

‘You’ve been standing up there for three hours arguing with your ex-roommate about whose turn it was to pay the phone bill, like, fifteen years ago, and _I’m_ the annoying bitch?’

‘Yes, you are,’ Dennis confirms. ‘In a thousand lifetimes, even if all I ever did was argue with Mac about our phone bill, I could never be as annoying as you.’

Even Mac grunts in agreement with that. Dee throws her hands up and slumps back in her seat.

‘And anyway,’ Dennis continues, ‘I already said earlier that Mac never paid the phone bill once in his goddamn life, so that just proves you haven’t really been paying attention and don’t have the right to contribute.’

‘I’ll allow it,’ Artemis says shortly, giving Dennis a worried look out the corner of her eye. ‘Anything to make you stop.’

‘Okay, well, what I was _going_ to say,’ Dee rallies, glaring at Dennis, ‘is that it really doesn’t matter who paid the phone bill or whatever, Jesus Christ. Literally the only thing that matters here is who was the crappy roommate. That’s what the dispute is actually about, and surely we have enough information to decide that now, after three fucking hours. Can we just pick one, so that we can all get on with our lives?’

‘I don’t get that, though,’ Charlie pipes up, frowning. It’s the only thing he’s said since the arbitration began; Dennis had been fairly sure he was napping along with Frank. ‘Because like, okay, say Artemis decides that Dennis was the crappy roommate, then that means – what?’

‘That Mac gets to keep living with Rex,’ Dee supplies.

‘Okay. But if we decide that Mac was the crappy roommate, then that means what?’

‘That Mac would come back to live with me, obviously,’ Dennis tells him tersely. ‘Because I won. God, Charlie, we explained that at the start. Weren’t you even listening?’

‘But if you win, then we’d have decided that Mac was the crappy roommate,’ Charlie repeats, nonplussed. ‘So why would you want him to come back and live with you again?’

Dennis blinks. There’s a long pause.

‘It’s not about that,’ he says eventually, his voice unsure. He can feel Mac’s gaze boring into the side of his face like a fucking laser pointer, but there’s no way on earth he’s going to turn and look. ‘It’s about – so I would have won, and that means that, like – I won’t have to pay the bills on my own anymore, or rent, because Mac would be paying them too.’

‘Literally one of your arguments just now was that Mac never paid rent,’ Dee reminds him.

‘Right, but this time he would,’ Dennis persists.

‘Why?’ Charlie asks. ‘He’s gotten away with not doing it for like, twenty years, bro. Why would he start now?’

‘Because –’ Dennis scrambles for something that sounds reasonable, not even caring if it’s true anymore ‘– because this would finally be a more formalised arrangement, instead of him just like, crashing at my place and never fucking moving out, like he did when I came back from college.’

‘That is _not_ what happened,’ Mac objects. ‘You invited me to live with you, dude! You said it made sense, ‘cause we worked together, and you wanted to keep an eye on me, make sure I didn’t fuck anything up and came to work on time, and –’

‘That does sound like early- to mid-twenties Dennis,’ Dee says thoughtfully, raising an eyebrow at Charlie.

‘Douchebag control freak, as opposed to rage-fuelled control freak,’ Charlie agrees. ‘Dennis Reynolds, circa 2003.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ Frank mumbles. ‘Things were a real laugh riot before I came around, huh?’

‘But this is all irrelevant, because what I’m saying is that it would be different this time around,’ Dennis says, hearing his voice get progressively louder. He bites his lip, trying to stay calm. He has to keep his cool. He can do this.

‘How?’ Mac asks, turning to him directly. ‘How the hell would things be different, Dennis?’

‘I’d put your name on the lease,’ Dennis offers, more or less at random. He has no intention of actually doing that, but he could definitely lie and mock up a contract if Mac asked to see one. He’d have absolutely no idea what he was signing, Dennis is sure of that. ‘I’d – we could talk about –’

‘Wait, wait, wait,’ Artemis stops them. Dennis could knock her off her throne for not letting him finish, even though he isn’t really sure what he was going to say. She has one hand propping up her chin, the other waving in their general direction, emanating the mood of someone who is long past giving a fuck. ‘We’re getting off track here. Charlie’s got a point. I thought you didn’t want to live with Mac anymore, right? That was the whole thing? You said he was – what was it –’

‘Irritating, noisy and self-obsessed,’ Mac repeats evenly, still watching Dennis.

‘Well.’ Dennis coughs. ‘I mean, come on, dude. You can’t say it’s not true.’

Mac rolls his eyes and looks away.

‘Right,’ Artemis says slowly. ‘So then why –’

‘Because!’ Dennis bursts out, turning to Artemis in a blaze of frustration. ‘Because I – because.’

Silence. Dennis’s heartbeat pounds through him, so loud in his ears that he’s convinced everyone else must be able to hear it.

‘But you’re happy I moved out,’ Mac says. He’s looking at Dennis now, that’s for sure, but Dennis can’t meet his eyes. Mac sounds like he did all those times Dennis tried to explain to him why flat earthers are crazy. _‘B_ _ut why, Dennis? How do_ you _know the earth is round? Have you walked the whole fucking thing yourself?’_ That exact same belligerent confusion. ‘You said – you keep saying –’

‘You know what? I don’t want to talk about this anymore,’ Dennis announces. He turns to the easel and starts furiously rubbing out the list of good and bad qualities that divided the board, to a chorus of complaints. He whirls back around, addressing the entire room. ‘Jesus, will you shut up? This is _my_ thing, my – this was a bad idea. It’s not appropriate for people’s private lives to be determined in a public court, and you all should be ashamed of yourselves. That’s it.’

‘So you’re ceding your case?’ Artemis asks. ‘Is that the terminology? Bueller? Someone tell me what the fuck is going on, please.’

‘Couldn’t tell you,’ Charlie says. ‘No idea.’

‘I think he’s freaking out again,’ Dee says unhappily, as if Dennis isn’t even in the room. ‘Which was like, the complete opposite of what we were trying to achieve, because if he freaks out then he’ll probably just take off again, and we’ll be down a bartender, and –’

‘Oh, is _that_ what went down last year?’ Artemis asks, surveying Dennis with renewed interest. ‘I thought it was a prison thing. You know.’ She winks. ‘All that sexual misconduct.’

‘Can everyone stop talking about me like I’m not here?’ Dennis snaps, voice abruptly spilling over into too loud.

Everybody looks at him like he’s crazy; like he’s some unpredictable wild animal that just wandered into the bar. Dennis wants to laugh, he really does. They’re the ones who’ve driven him to this state but they never want to take any responsibility for it. They always just end up watching from a safe distance. It must be great to be able to walk away from it. Dennis wishes he knew what that felt like.

He tries again, moderating his tone. ‘I am actually still here right now, you know?’

‘Dennis,’ Mac tries, coming up to the side of him. He puts his hand on his arm. Dennis stares down at it. It’s the first time Mac has touched him in weeks, and he’s decided to do it _now_? ‘Look, can we just go somewhere and –’

‘ _No_ ,’ Dennis spits, yanking himself out of Mac’s grasp. ‘No! God! What part of _I don’t want to talk about this anymore_ don’t you understand? I don’t want you near me, I don’t want – I don’t want anything, I’m –’

Mac blinks at him, hands up in a _don’t shoot_ pose. His gaze flickers to the roomful of people watching them silently. Dennis feels each stare like the flick of a fingertip against a bruise.

‘I didn’t mean to – just, if we could –’

‘I have to go,’ Dennis says. He swallows. ‘I have to go.’

Nobody tries to stop him as he leaves, but then why would they? They’ve already had their fun.

\---

In the next twenty-four hours, Dennis discovers perhaps the only advantage to living alone: there’s no one around to make him talk about all the things he doesn’t want to discuss. If he wants to get blackout drunk and wake up in a pool of his own vomit on the bathroom floor at 5AM the next morning, then that’s his prerogative. Nobody is going to save him from himself, and that is just fine with Dennis.

Not that he needs to be saved.

He drags himself into work in the afternoon because he can’t stare at the four walls of the apartment anymore. Sometimes it still feels like they’re closing in on him, like they did the day Mac left, getting a little closer every time he blinks. He keeps thinking he’s going to get used to how static everything is – no one else around to adjust the thermostat, move stuff around in the kitchen, leave their stupid shoes right in front of the door – but he hasn’t. The worst part was supposed to be over by now. That’s what he’d told himself; that there was only so long it could stay that bad, and by now he would be fine.

Charlie’s the only one sat at the bar, drinking a beer and playing a game on his phone. Probably Candy Crush or something, from the little flashy noises; one with a lot of bright colours and very few words.

Dennis doesn’t see any signs of Mac and relaxes a little, too tired to really stay on guard.

‘Hey, man,’ Charlie greets him, as if this is just a normal day. Then again, this is Charlie: he may well have already forgotten what happened at the arbitration. ‘What’s up?’

‘Kind of tired,’ Dennis mutters, avoiding his eye as he sits. ‘Hey, give me one of those.’

Charlie passes him a beer. ‘Still can’t sleep, huh?’

‘I don’t think I’ve slept right for six months,’ Dennis says out of nowhere, and then blinks at himself. He has a weird jolting flashback to him and Dee standing in front of Mac’s open bedroom door, Dennis saying, _That’s not really why I don’t want to do it._

‘Wow, that’s, uh,’ Charlie lets out a deep breath. ‘Six months, huh. That’s heavy.’ A pause. ‘So, hey, did you hear about that thing with Cricket and the –’

‘Do you think I’m a bad roommate?’ Dennis asks in a low voice, staring straight ahead. His own reflection in the mirror behind the bar looks like shit but it’s preferable to looking Charlie in the face while they have this conversation. It’s just because they didn’t come to an agreement yesterday, that’s all. He knows he’s in the right; he just needs to hear somebody else say it.

‘I don’t know, man,’ Charlie says after a minute. ‘I’ve never lived with you.’

‘Except for those three weeks back in ’95,’ Dennis reminds him, lip twitching as he catches Charlie’s eye in the mirror. ‘Remember, when your uncle Jack moved in with –’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ Charlie cuts across him, rolling his shoulders. ‘Doesn’t count, you still lived at home back then. You had maids and shit.’

‘I’m amazed you noticed.’

‘Well, that house was so weird and clean all the time, man. Like, it was so huge and _white._ Like a palace or something. Something from a movie.’

‘Like something from a movie,’ Dennis echoes. ‘Is that the fanciest house you’ve ever been in, Charlie? That’s kind of sad.’

‘Whatever,’ Charlie shrugs. ‘Both of us ended up in shitty apartments, bro. At least out of the two of us, I’ve still got Frank.’

Dennis’s hand tightens briefly around his beer. He forces it to relax.

‘My apartment is way nicer than yours,’ he says evenly. ‘Don’t lump me in with your crack den.’

‘It’s not a crack den,’ Charlie argues. ‘As someone who’s been addicted to crack multiple times, dude, I don’t think you should be throwing around inversions like that.’

‘Inversions?’ Dennis blinks. ‘Do you mean – aspersions? Like –’

‘No, not like the autistic thing, like –’

‘That’s _Aspergers_ , Charlie, not aspersions – oh my God, I’m getting you that dictionary for Christmas, dude. I don’t care if you think it’s lame.’

‘How’s a dictionary going to help me, Dennis?’ Charlie asks, sounding genuinely amused. ‘You think I’d just start from page one and learn from there? Like all the definitions don’t have a bunch of other words in them apart from the one they’re describing? Leave it alone, man.’

‘Well, excuse me for trying to help,’ Dennis snorts, leaning back a little on his stool. ‘Don’t you think it’s a little pathetic that you’re a forty-year-old man who can barely read his own name?’

‘I think it’s a little pathetic that you’re pretending you care about that right now,’ Charlie snorts. ‘Don’t put this on me just ‘cause you’re having a shitty day.’

‘I’m not having a shitty day,’ Dennis snaps.

‘Shitty year, then.’

‘I’m not having a shitty year.’ Dennis throws up his hands, glaring at Charlie, who just raises an eyebrow and drinks his beer. Dennis doesn’t know exactly why it feels so important for him to convince Charlie of this, but there’s a nagging in the pit of his stomach that he knows from past experience won’t go away until he does. ‘I’m not.’

‘Alright, you’re having a great year,’ Charlie says easily.

Dennis scowls. 

‘You don’t mean that, but I am,’ he insists, the childish pitch of it making him squirm. ‘And just for the record, I could have someone, if I wanted.’

‘What do you mean?’ Charlie squints at him.

‘I could get a new roommate,’ Dennis says, trying to inject more confidence and less petulance into his tone this time. ‘Like Dee wants me to. I could.’ He takes a long drink. ‘Or I could get Mac back, if I wanted.’

Charlie makes a noncommittal noise.

Dennis frowns. ‘What, you don’t think I could?’

‘I think I don’t care enough to fight about it,’ Charlie says, sounding older than his years. ‘I’m not up for being your punching bag today, bro.’

‘I’m not trying to make you into one, though,’ Dennis argues, hearing the frustration in his own voice. ‘I’m just –’ He stops, something stuck in his throat. He swallows. ‘I just need –’

There’s a pause. Charlie doesn’t jump in and save him, but at least he’s still sat there. He’s still listening. 

‘I don’t know,’ Dennis says. He takes a long pull of his beer. He’s sweating more than he should be, considering the temperature in the bar. ‘He’s a shitty roommate, Charlie. He really is.’

‘I know, buddy,’ Charlie says. He sighs and claps Dennis on the back, rubs a slow circle with his steady hand. ‘I know he is.’

‘He’s just so _annoying,_ ’ Dennis bursts out, eyes widening with outrage. ‘He’s – he’s so loud, and he’s messy, and he takes up so much space, and –’

‘Yeah.’

‘He’s the worst.’

‘I know.’

‘Don’t patronise me.’

‘I’m not!’ Charlie protests. ‘Come on, man, you know I’m not. Mac’s the worst, we all know he’s the worst.’

‘Right.’ Dennis closes his eyes and sighs, feeling a modicum of relief at hearing Charlie confirm it.

‘It’s just,’ Charlie says. Dennis opens his eyes again and meets Charlie’s eye in the mirror opposite. Charlie looks for all the world as if he’s trying to phrase something _delicately,_ which is not an expression Dennis is used to seeing on his face. ‘I mean. You know you’re kind of the worst too, right?’

‘Um,’ Dennis says, over the dull rushing in his ears. ‘Wow, thanks, Charlie. Really boosting my self-esteem over here.’

‘No, no, shut up a second,’ Charlie interrupts him, holding up a hand. ‘That’s the reason this whole thing works. Because you’re both, like, crazy high maintenance, right? Like, no one else is gonna want to live with you. With _either_ of you. I give Rex another three weeks maximum of putting up with Mac’s shit. He’s only made it this long because he’s really fucked up right now himself, like he’s got all these –’

‘I really can’t articulate how little I care about Rex’s emotional problems,’ Dennis interrupts. ‘Finish what you were saying.’

‘Jesus Christ. Okay, my point is that you’re both fucking stupid, how’s that?’

‘Great point, well made,’ Dennis says sourly, getting up from his stool. ‘Thanks so much for your life-changing advice, as always.’

‘Look, I’m just saying maybe you’d be happier if you stopped fighting everything so hard,’ Charlie says, rolling his eyes. ‘I mean, can you really imagine anything else, at this point?’

‘Anything other than what?’ Dennis asks warily.

‘Other than what we’ve got right here.’ Charlie gestures to the bar. ‘Other than – I don’t know, living with Mac. Pulling scams. You moved all the way to North Dakota but you still came back, Dennis. Doesn’t that kind of prove something?’

‘It doesn’t have to,’ Dennis argues, ignoring the churning in his stomach. ‘It doesn’t have to mean anything.’

‘Right, I mean, it doesn’t _have_ to,’ Charlie agrees, sounding like he’s getting caught up in semantics the way he does sometimes; led astray by his fragmented, piebald understanding of language. ‘But, like. Maybe it does?’

\---

Dennis hides out in the back room for a while, nursing another beer. He stares at the damp patterns on the wallpaper and thinks about how there are really not enough cushy places to retreat in the bar, considering how often they all can’t stand to be around each other. They should really think about redecorating or doing something with the basement to make it less of a death trap. There should be somewhere people can go that doesn’t bring to mind alarmist headlines about the dangers of living with black mould.

He passes an hour indulging a prolonged fantasy about hiring a deep cleaning crew to come in and sweep the bar from top to bottom. They could really go to town, make everything look shiny and new. Maybe they’d find out the bar stool cushions are a completely different colour underneath all the grime. Maybe more than one woman would actually come into the bar at any given time, if they could keep it clean around here.

But Dennis knows that would never really happen. In reality, they’d make an effort to keep things clean for about three days, and then they’d get distracted by something else. Things would go back to how they were before, and no one would bother putting in more than the bare minimum, and after a while they’d get so used to working in the dust and the dirt that they’d forget what it was like to live any other kind of life.

Dennis wishes he had a word for the kind of howling fear that overtakes him, just paralyses him, in moments like this. The fear that comes with being absolutely certain that this is where he’s going to be until he dies – that these are the people he’s chosen to surround himself with, for better or for worse, and just like him they’re going to stay too, because none of them have the energy to work any harder. Just like him, they know they deserve the dregs.

There has to be something else – that’s what the fear is screaming at him, every time. It drove him all the way across the country once. It reminds him over and over that if Dennis could choose, he wouldn’t have chosen this. The problem with trying to stop fighting everything so hard is that whatever Dennis is meant to be accepting has to prop itself against that fear and stay upright. And he’s never been very good at change, least of all the stuff that happens low down, at near cellular level.

He never had to be, before.

\---

When he comes out of the backroom at around nine, the bar is populated by its sluggish regulars, dotted sporadically across their usual booths. Mac’s there, checking IDs at the door like he actually knows how to do his fucking job. His eyes shoot straight over to Dennis when the door opens. He doesn’t look away until the guy he’s ID’ing waves a hand in front of Mac’s face. Mac scowls and turns back to him, and Dennis takes the opportunity to get behind the bar and head straight for the bottle of Everclear, ignoring his own reflection in the mirror.

‘Gimme two Old Fashioneds, for those guys in the corner.’ Dee nods over at the booth in question. It contains two guys Dennis has never seen around before.

‘Old Fashioneds?’ Dennis blinks, the grain alcohol sinking in. Dee’s face is going pleasantly fuzzy. ‘Where the hell do they think they are?’

Dee rolls her eyes.

‘They think they’re in a bar, Dennis.’

Dennis Googles the drink and studies the list of ingredients on his phone, frowning at the way the letters keep moving around.

‘We got no bitters,’ he murmurs, looking up and down the bar for alternatives. ‘You think Tabasco would do?’

‘Better than nothing, right?’ Dee shrugs.

Judging from the looks on their faces when they take the first sips of their drinks, the two guys in the corner don’t agree. They stumble over to the door, looking queasy, and decide to give Mac some shit about it on their way out. God knows why they think that’ll be more effective than taking it up with the bartender. Maybe they’ve spotted the unstable glint in Dennis’s eye.

Dennis watches with amusement as they point him out to Mac, as if Mac might never have met the bartender in his own place of work before. Dennis waves. One of the guys starts gesticulating wildly, his friend nodding along, so Dennis frowns and points at his own chest, playing dumb; _who, me?_

Mac’s leaning back against the doorframe and watching Dennis, clearly not paying a bit of attention to what the guy is saying. The corners of his mouth are curved in a small smile. Dennis feels his own expression softening. He lets his hand fall.

One of the guys touches Mac on the arm, trying to make him respond. Dennis could have told him _that_ was a stupid idea. The look on Mac’s face changes immediately as his gaze snaps away from Dennis; he shakes off the guy’s hand and says something loud and belligerent, which makes the guy’s mouth gape open. Dennis feels himself grinning as Mac takes hold of their collars and shoves them out the door into the cold night.

A couple of hours after that, Dennis is mindlessly scrolling through his phone and waiting for the last couple of stragglers to leave when he notices Mac leaving his post by the door. None of the others are around – Charlie’s cleaning the restrooms, and Dee’ll be counting her tips in the backroom or already on her way home. She likes to leave without saying goodbye, so they can’t rope her into any clean-up. Frank is almost definitely asleep, although God knows where.

‘Hey,’ Mac says, coming up to the edge of the bar. He starts drumming his fingertips on the bar in an irritating pattern. He’s also biting his lip, blinking a lot; a regular playbook of tells. He looks like he had to give himself a pep talk just to walk over here.

Maybe it’s the Everclear still mellowing him out, but Dennis can’t take any satisfaction in that. When was the last time it genuinely felt good to watch Mac approaching him so warily? It might have been the day Mac moved out – when they were fighting, and the only positive thing Dennis could claw out of it was a sense of vicious pride that at least it was hurting Mac, too.

‘Hey,’ Dennis says back, nonplussed at the searching expression on Mac’s face.

‘I wanted to ask you something,’ Mac says. The words sound oddly rote and formal, as if Mac practiced them in advance.

Dennis blinks. He definitely isn’t drunk enough for this.

‘Okay,’ he says, bracing himself on the edge of the counter. ‘Shoot.’

‘Okay.’ Mac takes a deep breath. ‘Okay. Uh. Do you want to go for coffee or something, this week?’

It sits between them for a long moment. Dennis’s brain is a blank expanse of white noise.

‘Or like – we could do dinner or something,’ Mac continues, turning beet red. ‘Like we – we could go to Guigino’s, if you wanted. Not like – not like a date,’ he hurries to correct himself. He’s twisting his hands together in front of his body, his gaze skittering everywhere but Dennis’s face. ‘I just thought, maybe we could. Talk, or something. Uh. Because at the arbitration it kind of seemed like maybe you wanted to – talk.’ A pause. ‘So. Do you want to?’

It couldn’t be clearer that Mac expects him to say no – in Mac’s head he’s already said it, Dennis can see it in his face. Dennis expects himself to say no, too. He opens his mouth to say exactly that, every brain cell listing off a different reason why this would be a bad idea.

But something funny happens to the thought on the way down to his mouth, and what comes out instead is: ‘Yes.’

Mac stares at him.

‘Yes?’ he repeats dumbly, his eyes wide with surprise. ‘Yes. You said – yes? You want to?’

Dennis opens and closes his mouth. He feels the blood surging to his face. He wonders wildly whether he can just vault the bar and run right out the front door to avoid having the rest of this conversation.

‘You know I meant just the two of us, right?’ Mac says, almost timidly. It’s pathetic, it’s completely pitiable, and that’s why it makes something in Dennis’s chest twist really hard. That’s why.

‘Yes, I’m aware of that,’ he snaps. ‘I’m not an idiot.’

‘Okay, okay.’ Mac holds up his hands, eyes still very wide. ‘I just wanted to make sure.’

‘Well, you don’t need to,’ Dennis tells him. He clears his throat, wishing his mouth wasn't so dry. The bottle of Everclear is on a shelf behind the bar, just out of range. ‘I know what you meant.’

There’s a beat of silence.

‘Okay,’ Mac says again, quieter. ‘I believe you.’

Dennis swallows hard. ‘So I guess we’ll, uh. Let me know the place, and when you’re free, and – and we’ll work something out.’

‘Yeah,’ Mac says. He’s smiling now; it’s beautiful, it’s awful. Dennis is absolutely terrified. ‘Okay.’


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> <3 <3 <3

‘So,’ Mac says.

‘So,’ Dennis agrees.

‘How are you, uh – oh, just coffee, thanks,’ Mac tells the waitress. He flashes her an absurdly broad, white grin and she blinks at him, pencil poised above her notepad.

‘Sure,’ she says after a moment, sounding a little dazed.

Dennis rolls his eyes.

‘Same for me,’ he says pointedly.

‘Mm hmm,’ murmurs the waitress, not even looking at him. ‘Coming right up.’

Dennis frowns after her as she walks away. He opens his mouth to complain about being ignored, but when he turns back around Mac is watching him, and all the words dry up.

Dennis swallows and looks away. He stares at the surface of the table for lack of other options. Some hopeful bastard carved LUKE + TRACEY 4EVA into the woodgrain at some point, squeezed close to the wall; a couple of the letters have worn away over time. That should probably have served as a sign of how forever was going to work out for Luke and Tracey, but people are perpetually resistant to internalising messages like that. Everyone wants to believe their love is the special one, the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that will actually last.

‘What are you thinking about?’

Mac’s voice startles him, and Dennis almost curses; he’d been so close to forgetting where they are, what they’re doing. Whatever the hell they’re doing.

‘Nothing,’ he says automatically. He sighs. ‘You don’t want to know.’

‘I mean.’ Mac leans back in the booth, shrugging. He tries for a small smile. ‘I kind of do. That’s why we’re here, bro.’

Dennis studies him for a second. He looks different here, in a way that Dennis can’t quite pinpoint. It’s something about seeing him outside the gang’s territory, with no one around to look at them sideways or ask what they’re doing. Mac doesn’t seem as tense.

He’s wearing one of their old Paddy’s t shirts, the cheap ones they print by the hundred and sell to drunk college students during Spring Break. It’s old and faded, dye wearing out around the armpits. You could get a picture of Mac wearing one of those from every year of his life since they opened the stupid place, probably.

‘Why did you want us to come here? Like, here specifically,’ Dennis asks. He picks up one of the menus the waitress had forgotten to take with her: _Marcy’s Diner_ spelled out in sickly pink letters and a logo clearly cribbed from Wendy’s, although the pigtailed girl looked a little queasy in this version. ‘They don’t even serve alcohol here, man. _Marcy’s Diner_? Who the fuck is Marcy? We’ve never been here before, not that I can recall.’

‘You haven’t.’ Mac shifts in his seat, cheeks pinking slightly. ‘I mean, we haven’t. And I haven’t either. I thought it’d be – you know. Safe.’

There’s a pause.

‘Safe,’ Dennis tries. There’s a laugh on the tip of his tongue, a feather breath from breaking out. ‘Like, neither of us are going to get food poisoning kind of safe?’

Mac shoots him a look.

‘Like neutral ground kind of safe,’ he mutters. Now he’s the one staring at the table, tracing words Dennis can’t read into the woodgrain. ‘Somewhere neither of us have the home advantage, you know?’

‘You picked it,’ Dennis says, not even really sure why he’s arguing anymore. ‘That means you’ve got the advantage over me, bro. I didn’t get any say in this.’

‘Alright.’ Mac rolls his eyes. ‘You can pick the location next time, okay?’

_Next time_.

‘Maybe,’ Dennis says. Where the fuck is that waitress? He needs caffeine almost more than he needs alcohol. ‘I could definitely pick somewhere better than this.’

Mac snorts.

‘You’re welcome to try, but I’m telling you, man, we’ve left our mark all over the city. Whether that’s a good thing or not.’

Dennis frowns. ‘It can’t be that hard. New restaurants and bars and stuff pop up all the time.’

‘Yeah, and how long is it before Dee drags one of us down there to try and bag some couples’ discount, huh?’ Mac points out. ‘Or until one of us hears about a drinks deal and we all show up and get rowdy, and then get barred?’

‘Well, if it’s just the two of us then it’ll be different,’ Dennis says, without thinking. ‘We can control ourselves, right?’

Mac stares at him for a moment.

‘Right,’ he says, in a slightly cracked voice.

Dennis hears his own words echoing back to him and winces. He opens his mouth to say something – anything – to defuse the way Mac is looking at him when, thank God, the waitress finally shows up.

‘Got your coffee,’ she says warmly, trying to catch Mac’s eye.

‘Great,’ he says, without looking away from Dennis.

‘Anything else you need?’

She’s hovering unnecessarily close to Mac’s shoulder. Dennis frowns. If there’s anyone she should be paying attention to here, it’s the guy wearing a button-up which perfectly complements the colour of his eyes, and concealer to hide the bags under them. Dennis might have woken up with a headache the size of an elephant sitting above his right eye, but she doesn’t have to know that. He’s still a catch.

‘No,’ Dennis says loudly, when it becomes clear that Mac isn’t going to. ‘So can you, y’know. Leave?’

Her mouth drops open at his rudeness as she makes eye contact with him for the first time. He raises an eyebrow. She walks off muttering, casting them vengeful glances over her shoulder.

Dennis shakes his head, turning to his coffee. Sugar or sweetener? He should really be using sweetener, but he hasn’t eaten anything all day and he probably needs the energy. That’s the kind of argument Mac would make, anyway. If he still thought he had any right to weigh in on Dennis’s eating habits.

Dennis picks up the Sweet’N Low.

‘So you’re doing okay?’ Mac asks.

Dennis looks up. Mac’s looking at him like he really cares about the answer; like he expects Dennis to tell the truth.

‘Of course,’ he says stiffly. ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

Mac fidgets, although he doesn’t look away.

‘You just seemed kind of, uh. Stressed out? At the arbitration.’ Mac balks at Dennis’s expression and continues hurriedly. ‘So I just wanted to, you know. Make sure. That you were okay.’

His voice has softened considerably by the end of that little speech, but Dennis barely registers it. He’d thought, when Mac invited him out here – he’d thought it had to mean – but no. This isn’t about moving back in, obviously. This isn’t about that at all. It’s just about Mac assuaging his guilt over whatever his moving out has done to Dennis. He doesn’t want to come back.

Why would he?

It’s pathetic, really, Dennis thinks as he lifts his trembling coffee cup to his lips. The cloying artificial sweetness hits his palate, sinks to his empty stomach. Mac somehow found the strength to walk out on him, but now he can’t handle the consequences.

And it isn’t Dennis’s job to handle them for him anymore.

‘Like I said,’ he says. ‘I’m fine. Anyway, we don’t have to talk about me. How are _you_ doing?’

Mac sits back a little. ‘How am _I_ doing?’ he asks, nonplussed. ‘I’m fine, Den, I’m –’

‘Don’t call me that,’ Dennis interrupts.

Mac flinches. It hits like nicotine, like crack; so good Dennis can barely contain his smile.

He leans forward, resting his elbows on the table between them. ‘I want to talk about you. You inviting me out here, like some special little club just for the two of us.’ Mac’s face is turning slowly red. Dennis watches, hungry. ‘About how you can’t let go, even though I’ve told you a million times that this –’ he gestures between the two of them ‘– is never going to happen.’

‘This isn’t about that,’ Mac counters. The furrow between his brows had deepened with each word Dennis spoke, and now he looks about as angry – and sad – as he did last time they had this conversation. So predictable; so reassuring. ‘I’ve told you before. I know you don’t want – that.’ He sighs, rubbing his forehead. ‘Why is it always like this with us now, man? Why can’t we go five minutes without fighting?’

Dennis has to look down for a second. He sets down his coffee cup, wishing fervently that it was full of something stronger. He should have brought his hip flask, or at least taken a couple of bracing swigs before he came inside – it’s out in the car, still half full of bourbon from last night.

‘It’s not my fault you don’t listen,’ he says. His voice sounds more fragile than he would like. But it’s true – Mac probably won’t understand, but it is. Why does Mac give him chance after chance when he must know by now how it’s going to end? ‘This was your idea.’

Mac slumps back in his seat and stares out the window.

‘I thought it’d be better,’ he says, almost to himself. ‘If we could –’ he waves a careless hand at their surroundings. ‘If we could get away, you know? If we could just go somewhere else.’

‘That only works if our surroundings are the problem, not us,’ Dennis says dully.

Mac meets his eyes, and after a second Dennis has to look away.

‘It’s me, right?’ Mac asks. His voice is so heavy with bitterness that it’s almost unrecognisable. ‘You think it’s me that fucked everything up. Well, fine. I’m sorry, Dennis. I’m sorry I fucked it all up, okay? I’m sorry I kept – touching you, and hitting on you, and –’

He catches his breath, setting his hands flat on the table. Dennis stares at him.

‘I’m sorry. I won’t do it again,’ Mac finishes. He looks at Dennis, pleading. ‘I’m trying to move on, you know? I’m trying not to – not to feel like that about you, anymore. I know it was, uh.’ He blinks, hard. ‘I know it was kind of dragging everybody down.’

Dennis concentrates on breathing in and out, in and out. The phantom hand resting on his chest, rising and falling with his heartbeat.

‘Wow,’ he says eventually. It takes more effort than it should. ‘You’ve really got it all figured out, huh?’ He licks his lips, forces a laugh. ‘Did you practice that in the mirror before you came out here or something?’

‘Don’t be a dick,’ Mac snaps, nostrils flaring with anger. ‘God, can’t you just – unclench for like, a minute? Can’t you just be honest with me?’

‘What am I supposed to say?’ Dennis asks. He hates how helpless it sounds. His mouth twists. ‘Sounds like you don’t need me to say anything. You got it all figured out. You want to move on, go ahead. No one’s stopping you.’

Mac lets out a harsh breath and stares out the window again. The sun is starting to set where they are; the rays fall in soft, butter yellow waves over his face. He looks younger like this, gentler. Even with his arms folded across his chest like that, the stubborn line of his jaw. He looks like he could be someone’s everything, if they wanted him to be. If they were young and stupid enough to believe that was possible.

‘You want me to forgive you?’ Dennis tests. ‘You want to be absolved? Fine, I forgive you. That make you happy?’

‘Ecstatic,’ Mac says sarcastically. He looks at Dennis, tired and shrewd. ‘You don’t really mean it. You’re just saying it so I’ll stop talking.’

‘Don’t put words in my mouth. If I said I forgive you, then I forgive you.’

Mac sizes him up. ‘For everything?’ he pushes. ‘Even the sex doll?’

Dennis averts his eyes. He should be disgusted by the sex doll; he knows this. He definitely should be. And he is, most of the time. But every so often it occurs to him that there’s someone on earth who wants him so much that they ordered a piece of plastic which looks exactly like him off the internet so that they could stick their dick in it, and that’s wrong and fucked up but also the kind of material that power trips are made of. Being someone’s ideal fantasy – it would be weirder if he _didn’t_ get a little turned on by that. Right?

‘Yes,’ Dennis says at length, his throat a little dry. ‘Even for the sex doll.’

Mac watches him in silence, looking like he’s on the edge of arguing. But in the end, he nods. ‘Okay. Fine. But I still don’t get what we’re supposed to do here.’

‘You’re the one who invited me,’ Dennis protests. ‘I didn’t come with, like, a list of conversation topics. It’s not my fault this isn’t going the way you wanted.’

‘I’m not saying it’s your fault!’ Mac groans, shoving his face into his hands and slumping back again theatrically. ‘See, this is what I mean, dude. We can’t talk about anything without someone blowing up. It’s fucked. I just want us to be friends again.’

‘Friends.’ Dennis rolls the word around his mouth, testing for sharp edges. ‘You want us to be friends?’

Mac looks up.

‘I mean, yeah,’ he says, nonplussed. ‘Isn’t that what you want?’

\---

Dennis spends the next four days watching Mac surreptitiously, trying to figure out the answer to his question.

Their trip to Marcy’s had ended awkwardly, both of them giving up after several subsequent attempts at conversation and going their separate ways. Dennis had spent long enough sat in the Range Rover fucking around on his phone afterwards to see Rex’s car pull up outside and Mac get in, smiling a greeting that was completely at odds with how he had said hello to Dennis. It’s still like being punched in the stomach, every time; Dennis marvels at it. No wonder Mac isn’t interested in moving back in. When he’s with Rex he looks happy, healthy, relaxed. Everything he didn’t look when they used to live together.

Friends. That’s the bar Mac has set; the one Dennis has to meet before they can go any further.

Not that there’s anywhere else Dennis wants to go.

He’s propping up the bar and mindlessly scrolling Twitter one afternoon when he finds himself drifting over to WhatsApp. Mac and Dee went out earlier to check out some new hippie bar that opened up on the other side of the city, operating on the premise that they might be able to steal some ideas. They really have to do something to start drawing in the millennial crowd, because for some reason the smoky, ill-lit, vaguely menacing vibe just isn’t cutting it.

There’s a bunch of unread messages at the top of his conversation with Mac. Dennis’s body floods with adrenaline for a second before he remembers he put Mac on mute a while ago and just forgot to ever take him off. Now he’s seeing everything Mac’s sent in the last couple of months, which is mostly just a string of random observations with a stray mournful _dennis?_ thrown in for good measure. It ends on a message sent forty-six days ago, a number that hits Dennis right in the gut:

_theres a dude in jamba juice who looks exactly like a canadian version of charlie_

This irritates Dennis so much that he doesn’t stop to think before he replies.

_Canadian people don’t look any different to American people, Mac._

Once he’s finished typing he stares down at his phone in mute panic. It’s going to seem really weird that Dennis is responding to a message Mac sent over a month ago, especially considering that they haven’t really been speaking since they met up. Or like, for weeks before that. He doesn’t have an excuse if Mac decides to call him on it. It’s not like he can say his hand slipped.

But Mac replies before Dennis has time to properly work himself up into a spiral:

_he was wearing a canadian flag scarf, dennis_

_with the maple leafs and everything_

Dennis rolls his eyes.

_Yeah, I know what the Canadian flag looks like, thank you. And I think its maple leaves, by the way._

He doesn’t get a reply to that, so after a few minutes he grudgingly sends:

_Got a pic?_

Mac sends over a picture almost instantly of a guy who’s wearing a maple leaf scarf and, he’s right, does bear a startling resemblance to Charlie.

_Pretty creepy that you took this without that guy knowing, dude. Like, a month ago. And kept it._

_tell that to all the girls you used to scope out at the gym,_ Mac replies. _bet they’d love to know about all the upskirt shots you took_

Dennis scoffs.

_Do you pay literally any attention to women at all? They don’t wear skirts to the gym, Mac._

_how would you know, you haven’t been in years_

Dennis doesn’t realise he’s smiling until Mac sends _:P_ a minute later, and then he feels his smile gets bigger, become a grin. He looks up quickly but there’s no one else around, not even a single customer. Charlie and Frank are nowhere to be seen. He’s alone in the bar, the one they left behind to hold down the fort. Free to act as he likes.

He clears his throat and looks back down at his phone, thumbs hovering over the screen. There are a couple of different ways he could play this, if Mac was a girl Dennis was trying to reel back in. But Mac has seen him go through the DENNIS system so many times that he might recognise the steps, and Dennis can’t really work up the energy for that much manipulation, anyway.

Mac had wanted him to be honest, back at Marcy’s. That’s what he’d said. 

Dennis taps his fingers against the back of his phone, trying to slow his rapid heartrate. It’s just a text. He doesn’t have to think any further ahead than that. It doesn’t have to mean anything.

_Do you want to try again?_

Mac’s reply comes within a minute:

_try what again_

Dennis rubs his temples.

_Coffee, idiot. Or dinner. Whatever._

_oh_

_yeah, okay._

_so long as you try not to be a huge asshole this time_

Dennis closes his eyes for a second before he replies.

_No promises._

When his phone pings with Mac’s reply, Dennis lets himself imagine Mac sat in that pretentious hippie bar with Dee, probably already slurring into her mason jar full of overpriced cocktail, smiling down at his phone the way Dennis is smiling at his:

_i said try, not promise. even im not that much of an idiot_

\---

Mac makes more of an effort this time, in terms of clothing.

It takes Dennis a minute to process it when Mac first gets into the car. He’s wearing a _shirt_ – a real one, with a collar and buttons and everything – and it’s a good colour for him, a warm, reddish purple which brings out the rich brown of his eyes. He’s got the sleeves rolled up to his forearms and someone somewhere has made the mistake of giving him a watch.

Dennis stares at it, wondering if it’s Rex’s.

‘You look nice,’ he says, and then immediately wants to die. Jesus Christ. _You look nice?_ What is this, junior prom? He clears his throat. ‘Where do you want to go?’

‘I thought you were gonna choose, this time,’ Mac reminds him. ‘Fair’s fair.’

‘Yeah.’ Dennis taps his thumbs against the steering wheel. It’s hard to concentrate, knowing that he’s sat in front of their building – Mac and Rex’s building, which contains the apartment they now live in together. As if the proximity to something Dennis hates so much is actually thickening the air, clogging up his lungs. ‘Okay, I’ve got somewhere.’

‘Lead the way, bro,’ Mac says, gesturing out the windshield. He’s grinning; it’s goofy as hell. He looks as happy as a golden retriever with its head stuck out the window just to be in a car with Dennis again, although they aren’t even in motion yet.

Dennis shakes his head, trying not to smile. He fits the key into the ignition and pulls away from the curb.

Mac hasn’t sat up front with him for so long that Dennis had forgotten the kind of space he takes up, the energy he exudes. It’s completely different to having Frank or Dee or Charlie riding shotgun; Mac runs hot, and he’s in motion _all the time._ He taps his fingers against his knee in time to the songs on the radio, humming tunelessly as he bobs his head, staring out the window as if he’s never seen Philadelphia before. The fading sunlight curves around his profile as they drive through the early evening. Dennis could count the eyelashes brushing his cheeks, if he’d stay still for long enough.

‘I need to get a car,’ Mac says conversationally.

Dennis shifts in his seat. He concentrates on the road.

‘Rex getting tired of driving you everywhere?’ he asks, voice clipped.

‘No,’ Mac says, not rising to the bait. ‘He doesn’t mind. It’s not like he’s got much else going on right now. It’s just something people do, right? Get a car? It’d be nice, to have that.’

Dennis swallows his automatic response – that inflating something as basic as getting a car into some kind of major life event is pretty pathetic for a man at the age of forty-two.

‘Just don’t get something shitty like Dee’s,’ he manages after a second. ‘And don’t let Frank borrow it.’

Mac snorts. ‘I know, man. I want it to last longer than a week.’ He pauses. ‘Although like, you can’t talk. Still eating cereal while you drive?’

Dennis is barely eating while stationary at the moment, not that he’s keen to share that with the class.

‘That arbitration was decided in my favour,’ he says smoothly. He hears Mac laughing, and allows himself a small smile, even as the sound of it tugs at something in his chest. It’s so easy to make Mac happy, and so hard to do it in front of anybody else.

They wind up at some low-rent hipster joint that serves like eight different things made out of chickpeas, mostly because Dennis saw them advertising online a few days ago and he wants to see the look on Mac’s face when he realises one of those things is cheesecake.

‘Kind of surprised you texted, man,’ Mac says, once they’ve ordered. His eyes are flitting all over Dennis’s face. ‘Didn’t think you’d want to meet again, after last time.’

Dennis holds back a sigh, drumming his fingertips on the table. They were doing fine. Why does Mac always have to have everything laid out for him? Why does he always want to _talk_?

‘Well, I was thinking,’ he starts, feeling the phantom prickle of stranger’s eyes on the back of his neck. ‘That we could try it, you know? Being different.’ He forces himself to meet Mac’s gaze. ‘Not like, anything weird, I just – I remembered what you said. About going somewhere else. Getting away.’

‘From ourselves,’ Mac says unsurely, squinting at him.

‘From everyone!’ Dennis exclaims, throwing his arms out wide. He’s aware that his cheeks are going red but it’s too late to stop now. Mac is watching him, at least; he’s listening. He hasn’t left. ‘I thought we could just – we could try. Something different.’

Mac studies him for a long moment.

‘Okay,’ he says eventually. His eyes are wide and a little wary, like he expects cameramen to jump out from behind the furniture any second, shouting _Sike!_ ‘But no weird roleplaying stuff where we pretend to be strangers or whatever, okay? I’m not into that.’

‘Oh my God,’ Dennis snaps. ‘No one said you were. That’s not what I meant.’

‘If you say so,’ Mac says, sounding dubious. He looks around the restaurant, the bare brick walls and excess of straw-oriented decor. The brightly coloured parasols hanging precariously from the lighting rig. ‘This place is kind of hokey. What made you wanna come here?’

‘That, mostly.’ Dennis nods at the waitress over Mac’s shoulder as she appears with their tray of food.

‘I’ve got jackfruit with sweet potato fries?’ she says, fake smile firmly in place.

‘Jackfruit?’ Mac asks with raised eyebrows. ‘Who the fuck ordered that?’

‘You did,’ Dennis points out. ‘Did you bother to read the menu at all, or did you just point and grunt like a Neanderthal?’

‘I ordered pulled pork,’ Mac says, frowning down unhappily at his plate of food.

‘And your tofu ribs with a side salad,’ the waitress says smoothly, setting a plate down in front of Dennis.

She places their beers on the table and beats a hasty retreat before Mac can make any more complaints. She’s wearing so many badges on her lanyard and keys on her belt that she clinks when she walks.

‘Jackfruit’s like, fake pulled pork,’ Dennis explains. He gestures down at his weird tofu rib stack. ‘None of this shit is for real, man. It’s all vegan.’

Mac looks up with an expression of abject betrayal.

‘Why would you bring us here, Dennis? Why would anyone do this?’

‘To broaden their horizons,’ Dennis says smoothly. ‘And to see the look on your face. Now gimme a sweet potato fry.’

Mac bitches and moans throughout the rest of the meal but he eats his entire plate of food, and some of Dennis’s salad too. They hang around in the restaurant until their waitress pointedly starts dragging the mop right past their table, shooting Dennis a meaningful glance.

‘That girl is definitely a lesbian,’ Dennis murmurs to Mac once she’s out of earshot. ‘Did you see the way she glared at me?’

‘She could just think you were an asshole,’ Mac points out, taking a swig of his beer. His fourth, by Dennis’s estimation. His shirt is looking a little rumpled by now, his eyes bright. ‘That’s not a requirement to be in the club.’

‘Come on, dude,’ Dennis protests. ‘She’s got blue hair and she’s wearing a carabiner. She’s _definitely_ a lesbian.’

‘Since when did you become such an expert?’ Mac raises an eyebrow, a little more challenging than the conversation really warrants. Almost like he wants to trip Dennis up somehow. ‘You, of the one gay friend?’

‘And Cricket, don’t forget Cricket.’

‘He counts as like, half a gay at best, Dennis. Gay for pay, he called it.’ Mac snorts. ‘Amateur.’

Dennis shifts in his seat, oddly nettled. ‘Well, you don’t know. I could have many gay friends. I could have had –’ he pauses, mostly to see if it catches Mac’s attention, which it does ‘– tons of gay friends in North Dakota.’

‘Bullshit,’ Mac says, rolling his eyes. ‘You would’ve shoved it in my face the second you got back. You would have told me all about how much better they were at being gay than me.’

Dennis opens his mouth and then closes it again.

‘Yeah,’ Mac says smugly. ‘That’s what I thought.’

They don’t talk much on the drive back to Mac’s apartment – Mac and Rex’s apartment. Dennis sings along softly to the radio while Mac rests his head back against his seat, harmonising when the mood strikes him. He has the window rolled down an inch, and it ruffles his hair whenever Dennis goes too fast around a corner.

‘That was nice,’ Mac says, when they pull up outside his building. His fingers are fretting at the strap on his watch. Rex’s watch. Whoever. ‘It was – nice.’

‘Yeah.’ Dennis clears his throat. He stares straight out the windshield. ‘You wanna do it again?’

‘Yes,’ Mac says, his voice lowering. He stops messing with the watch strap, his hands falling still. He looks at Dennis, but Dennis doesn’t return his gaze. He keeps his hands wrapped firmly around the steering wheel.

‘Okay, then,’ Dennis says evenly. ‘Say Tuesday next week?’

‘Sure,’ Mac says after a moment. ‘Thanks for the ride.’

Dennis nods.

There’s a pause.

Mac gets out of the car.

\---

The next time, they go to a bar. It’s far enough from work that word won’t get back to the others, but close enough that the prices are still dirt cheap. Mac wears another button-up shirt, bottle green this time. It’s a colour Dennis has never seen on him before.

Dennis gets absolutely shitfaced.

‘What the hell happened to you?’ Dee asks in bewilderment when he drags himself into work the next day.

Mac’s shoulders go tense, all the way over the other side of the bar where he’s playing pool with Charlie. He doesn’t turn around.

‘Quiet night in,’ Dennis offers, giving her a weak smile. ‘Just me, Netflix and Jägermeister.’

His heart is beating strangely hard as he escapes to the back office. He puts it down to the hangover.

The time after that, they line up to go and see _Captain Marvel_ at a movie theatre downtown and get into a fight with some comic book nerds in the queue outside.

‘Fuck that,’ Mac says eloquently, spitting blood onto the sidewalk. A fresh bruise is blooming into a black eye already. ‘Who needs to watch chicks throwing punches, anyway? I need a beer.’

They wind up back at Marcy’s after a couple of weeks, mostly out of morbid curiosity.

‘How do they even stay in business?’ Dennis wonders, looking around for their waitress in vain. It’s the same one as last time, the one who hates them. Ever since they came in, she’s been giving them the stink-eye from behind the cash register. But now he actually wants something, she’s disappeared into thin air. ‘Not exactly run off their feet. Damn it, where is she?’

‘I think she left,’ Mac says. ‘Like, I think she actually put on her coat and left, dude. We could probably take whatever we want from behind the counter.’

‘The chefs’ll still be here, idiot.’ Dennis rolls her eyes. ‘Besides, you think there’s any money in that register?’

He gestures around at the deserted diner. There are only two other people in here – an old couple sat in the corner sharing a piece of pie and drinking coffee together. They’re holding hands across the table, not speaking, although sometimes they smile when their eyes meet.

Dennis turns back to Mac.

‘Any progress on that car?’ he asks tightly, bringing his coffee cup to his lips even though it’s long gone cold.

‘Nope,’ Mac sighs, leaning back in the booth. His eyes stare unseeingly over Dennis’s shoulder. ‘Everything’s too expensive. And Rex is starting to get on my ass about paying the bills, too.’

Dennis studies the dregs of his coffee, silently counting to ten. Mac does this, sometimes; delivers jabs so sharp that Dennis would almost be proud, if he believed Mac was doing it on purpose. If Mac hadn’t been taught cruelty as a by-product of his parents’ neglect, rather than cultivating it as an artform like Dennis. 

Mac continues. ‘Plus, did you know that you have to get your driver’s license renewed like, every four years in Philly?’

Dennis blinks. ‘Yes, I knew that. Did you not know that? Jesus, Mac.’

‘Well, why would I know?’ Mac holds up his hands. ‘It’s not like I’ve had a car to drive around.’

‘Yes, but I’ve let you drive _my_ car,’ Dennis reminds him, distressed. ‘Without a licence, as it turns out.’

‘Not in the last four years,’ Mac mumbles.

Dennis looks at him sharply, but Mac’s already gotten his phone out, and he ignores Dennis’s glare.

‘It’s like he completely forgot that he might need to like, take some responsibility, you know,’ Dennis complains to Dee later, throwing an ace on the counter for emphasis. He studies the line-up of Dee’s cards in the mirror behind the bar; another couple of turns and he should have her on the rocks. ‘It really pissed me off.’

‘Where did you say you were for this conversation?’ Dee asks, quirking an eyebrow. ‘I thought you two barely saw each other anymore. You don’t talk at work.’

Dennis fidgets. That’s not entirely true. They might not _talk,_ but – Mac had passed Dennis a clipboard yesterday so that Dennis could check the mixer delivery, and Dennis had smiled at him; he remembers because of the way Mac’s face had brightened, after. And because of the way goosebumps had risen along his own skin, startled by the opening of the refrigerator door.

‘I ran into him in the doctor’s waiting room,’ he pulls from mid-air, then curses himself silently.

It’s not like it’s some huge secret that him and Mac are – whatever they’re doing, outside of work. But nobody knows. For some reason, no one seems to have figured out that they disappear at the same time on the same days and come back after a couple of hours.

Sometimes they don’t even go anywhere. Sometimes they just get in the Range Rover and drive. Mac’s window rolled down, air streaming in and fucking up their hair, music cranked loud enough to hear over the breeze. Sometimes Dennis notices Mac watching him, out of the corner of his eye; not smiling, not sad. Contemplative. Like he’s trying to work something out.

Nobody knows, and nobody needs to find out.

‘Oh.’ Dee frowns at her cards and puts down a queen of clubs. Dennis bites back a smile. Perfect. ‘Anything serious?’

‘What?’

‘Is it anything serious?’ she asks slowly, as if he’s hard of hearing. ‘Why you went to the doctor?’

‘Oh. No, I’m fine.’

‘And Mac?’

Dennis frowns. ‘What about him?’

Dee rolls her eyes. ‘Jesus Christ. Why was he at the doctor, dumbass?’

‘I don’t know.’ Dennis gives her a pointed look. ‘I didn’t ask, because it’s rude. Something you might like to keep in mind.’

‘Uh huh,’ Dee says dryly. Dennis feels his cheeks pinking and looks back down at his cards. ‘Can’t have been anything serious for him either, ‘cause he seems to be doing pretty great recently.’

‘In what sense?’ Dennis asks, flicking a glance at her. She’s smiling, all cocky, which is a very disturbing look on her. 

‘Just that he seems happier,’ she says casually. ‘Moving out of your apartment’s been really good for him. Weren’t we saying that the other day, Charlie?’ she calls to Charlie, hanging out on the other side of the bar with Frank.

‘Huh? Oh yeah, he’s way better.’

Dennis shifts his shoulders and tries to refocus on his cards. Dee’s just trying to throw him off his game.

‘He seems just the same as always to me,’ he says stiffly. ‘Same old annoying Mac.’

‘Well, you know,’ Dee shrugs. ‘Maybe you haven’t noticed since you barely see him –’ is that a smirk? Is Dee smirking at him right now? ‘– but he’s moved out, he’s not obsessing over you all the time, he’s kind of just – being less pathetic, is all. It’s a lot easier to hang out with him now.’

Dennis stays silent, staring at the cards in his hands. The numbers seem to be blurring into each other, and he can’t remember what he was intending to put down next. Mac seems so much happier. So much easier to be around. That has to be because he’s hanging out with Dennis, right? Not because he moved out? That has to be why. 

‘Your face is going all red,’ Dee points out. ‘Allergies playing up?’

‘I don’t have any allergies,’ Dennis says absently. ‘I mean, yes.’

‘Right,’ Dee murmurs. ‘All those allergies to beer and playing cards.’

\---

Dennis doesn’t want to give Dee’s provocation any more attention than it deserves, but it sticks with him all week. He’s still rattled when he pulls up outside Mac’s building a couple of days later, chewing his fingernails ragged while he waits for Mac to appear.

_It’s a lot easier to hang out with him now. He seems to be doing pretty great recently_. What the hell would Dee know about how Mac is doing? It’s not like her and Mac are any great pals.

‘I don’t want Italian tonight,’ Dennis blurts out impulsively when Mac gets into the Range Rover. ‘I know I’ve been saying I want pasta all day, but I changed my mind. I want something different.’

‘Alright,’ Mac says easily, fastening his seatbelt. ‘Where do you wanna go?’

Dennis starts to speak, then stops. Has Mac argued with him once about where they’ll go since they started doing this? Has he even expressed a preference? If he has, Dennis can’t remember it. Mac has deferred to Dennis every time, like he thinks Dennis will stop coming if they don’t go where he says.

‘I don’t know,’ he says, feeling wrong-footed. ‘Where do you wanna go?’

Mac raises an eyebrow. ‘I want Italian food. We’ve been texting about it literally all day, dude.’

‘So let’s do that. Where’s good?’

‘But you just said you didn’t want to.’

‘It’s fine, I was just –’

‘We can do whatever, man, I don’t care.’

‘So why did you just say –’

‘Because you wanted me to express a preference, Jesus Christ,’ Mac groans, burying his face in his hands. ‘This is worse than scrolling Netflix with you, dude.’

‘Well, how are you supposed to choose from all those options?’ Dennis asks heatedly. ‘How can they have so many movies and yet still –’

‘Nothing you want to watch, I know, I know,’ Mac says soothingly.

He goes to put a hand on Dennis’s shoulder and then sharply pulls it back. They sit in tense silence.

Mac clears his throat. ‘So. Where do you want to go?’

Dennis shakes his head with frustration.

‘I don’t know, I just told you.’

God, he wishes he’d refilled his hip flask. It’s rattling around in the footwell somewhere, dry as a bone.

Although that does give him an idea.

‘Dennis, I swear to God –’

‘Let’s get sandwiches and beer and sit up on the roof,’ Dennis says at random. That’s good, that feels right. He wants to go somewhere they know, for once – somewhere they don’t have to be around other people. ‘Yeah. Let’s do that. We haven’t done that for, God –’

‘Years,’ Mac agrees. He shifts uneasily in his seat. ‘Like. Nearly a decade? I mean, for a good reason, dude. It’s a roof, it’s not exactly the Ritz.’

‘I know, but.’ Dennis fidgets, burrowing harder into his jacket. He looks at Mac. It seems like a better idea the more he thinks about it. No one will be able to see them up there; they can just be themselves. ‘It could be fun. Stars are out tonight. It’ll be like old times. Right?’

‘If that’s what you want,’ Mac says, a little helplessly. But it’s a yes, and that’s what matters. That’s all Dennis needs to hear.

\---

‘This is nice,’ Dennis announces.

They’re sat up on the roof in a couple of metal fold out chairs Dennis found hidden behind the air conditioning vent, covered in a tarp. It’s not exactly warm up here, but it’s not like they’re going to stick around for hours and anyway, the beers’ll distract them from the cold. And they can see the stars, like Dennis imagined they would. If they squint.

‘I’m freezing my balls off, Dennis.’

‘Alright.’ Dennis rolls his eyes. ‘I’m trying to look on the bright side here, Mac. Create a little ambience.’

‘The ambience is inside,’ Mac says pointedly. He holds up the sad remains of his meatball sub. ‘Along with the Italian food we could be eating right now, which doesn’t come in plastic wrap.’

‘You wanna leave? Fine, we’ll leave. I did ask you in the car if you wanted Italian food, if you remember. I double checked. And you said this would be –’

‘Fine, fine,’ Mac huffs. He zips his hoodie all the way to the top and shoves his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket, hunkering down and muttering into his collar. ‘We’re here now, let’s just – enjoy it.’

They sit in silence for a little while.

‘It is kind of cold,’ Dennis admits. ‘I didn’t think it would be this cold.’

‘It’s February, not July,’ Mac reminds him. He leans back against his chair and sighs, taking a drink from his frigid bottle of beer. ‘When me and Charlie came up here that time we faked our own deaths, we had a fire and everything. It was awesome.’

‘It was not _awesome_ ,’ Dennis snorts. ‘It was dumb as shit. You couldn’t even keep up the ruse long enough to convince me you were actually dead.’

‘Like you would have even cared.’

It comes out confrontational, and Dennis looks at Mac in surprise. Mac is biting his lip, looking irritated with himself.

‘Never mind, I’m just –’

‘You don’t know I didn’t care,’ Dennis argues. ‘Just because you always want people to be falling at your feet or whatever. That’s not how the world works, Mac. Sorry I didn’t mourn you for the appropriate amount of time.’

‘You didn’t mourn me at all!’ Mac snaps. ‘You put an ad out for a new roommate like, immediately, dude. You didn’t give a shit.’

‘Because I knew you weren’t really dead!’ Dennis glares. ‘Besides, can you honestly tell me you’d be that upset if you woke up one morning and found out I was dead?’

‘Yes!’ Mac tells him hotly. ‘I would! I’d hate it! So there.’

Dennis blinks at him and turns away. There’s so much light pollution in Philly, it was ridiculous to think they’d be able to come up here and see the stars. It was stupid. This was a mistake.

‘Come on, man,’ Mac tries. ‘I didn’t mean to –’

‘Did you think it would go away, when you moved out?’ Dennis asks him, out of nowhere. His heart is beating loudly in his ears. He can feel Mac’s eyes burning into the side of his face, but he keeps staring straight ahead.

‘Did I think what would go away?’ Mac asks sullenly.

Dennis makes an irritated noise in his throat. ‘You know what.’

Mac bites his thumbnail, sighing.

‘Not really,’ he says eventually. He makes this noise which might have been a laugh, but it doesn’t sound amused at all. ‘I just thought it might annoy you less if you didn’t have to see me every day.’

Dennis swallows.

‘It’s not about whether or not it annoys me,’ he says. Even as he says it, he sounds annoyed, which doesn’t exactly help his case. ‘It’s – it’s your problem, man. It doesn’t affect me at all. I’m fine.’

‘Yeah, you seem fine.’ Mac says stonily. ‘Drinking yourself to sleep every night. Not eating. Yeah, you’re totally fine.’

‘What – that’s not relevant to this discussion.’

Dennis sits there in silence, fuming. Mac doesn’t get to make any sweeping judgments about how Dennis treats his body, no fucking way. Mac would pump his full of every toxin known to man so long as it promised him strength. He’s most of the reason Dennis is drinking in the first place; Mac doesn’t get to say _shit._

‘Well, at least I’m doing better than you,’ he gets out after an icy five minutes.

‘Are you?’ Mac asks, irritatingly calm. ‘How the fuck would you know how I’m doing, Dennis? You don’t ask. We do these dinners, we’re – we’re going out and talking and whatever but you never ask me about myself, man. You don’t want to know.’

‘I didn’t know you wanted to talk about it,’ Dennis argues, indignant. ‘I asked you about your car that one time, and – I thought you just wanted – you know, we talk about regular stuff, we – well, you always just wanna talk about me, and I –’

‘I have other interests in the world besides you, Dennis,’ Mac says loudly. ‘I told you, I’m – I’m trying to move on, and if we could talk about stuff like that then I could tell you how I’m feeling, and we could try to get past –’

‘I don’t care how you’re feeling,’ Dennis snaps on pure reflex. If he has to hear Mac talk about getting over him again, like he’s just a fucking bump in the road on the way to Mac’s happy ending, he’s going to smash the bottle in his hand against the edge of the crate and start screaming. Dennis _made_ Mac. Discussing Mac’s happiness without reference to Dennis is like pretending Eve never sprang into existence from Adam’s fucking rib. It’s ridiculous, and it’s embarrassing, and if Mac hadn’t gotten them into this mess in the first place then Dennis would never have had to worry about it, and he wouldn’t be sat here now trying to think of some way he can take back what he just said without actually apologising. He takes a deep breath. ‘Wait, that’s not – don’t –’

He puts out a hand to stop Mac getting up and it hits Mac’s forearm, taut and wiry with muscle under the leather of his jacket. Dennis’s fingers wrap around it, firm. They both look down at it, then back up at each other.

Dennis lets go.

‘There it is,’ Mac says, his voice dull and unhappy. He pulls in a weary breath. ‘I know it’s still weird for you, man. You said you forgave me, but you still don’t want me touching you. Not _ever._ And I don’t know what to do, ‘cause you said –’

‘I know,’ Dennis says. His tongue feels thick in his mouth. ‘Don’t tell me what I said.’

There’s a long silence.

‘Is it because of when you were –’

‘I’m not going to talk about that with you,’ Dennis cuts across him, his voice smooth as glass. He swallows hard, squeezing his eyes closed tight. His stomach is unsettled and he’s tired and he wants to go home. But there’s no Mac at home. There’s only Mac in their stupid fucking diner and at the movies and on the stupid roof, and never where he’s supposed to be anymore, never where Dennis wants him. ‘Anyway, I don’t want to – we’re getting off track here. We were talking about you. You wanted to talk about you, so – so let’s do it.’

‘Okay,’ Mac says quietly. ‘We can talk about me, if you want.’

‘I don’t know why you thought it would make any difference when you moved out,’ Dennis says, the first thing that comes into his head. He hears himself and it sounds like rambling, the words spinning out with the momentum of medicated energy, which is pretty funny considering how long it’s been since he was actually properly medicated. ‘I still see you all the time at work.’

‘Yeah,’ Mac sighs, shifting a little so he’s half-turned toward Dennis, half-toward the view. ‘I just figured, you know. You needed space. Sometimes we work different shifts. We don’t – what’s funny?’

‘Nothing,’ Dennis says, letting out another shaky laugh. ‘Just, the idea of you telling me I needed space is just – it’s fucking funny, Mac, come on, you have to admit that.’

‘It’s not that funny,’ Mac complains, although his face has softened a little. He watches Dennis laugh, a barely perceptible smile curving his mouth. ‘Okay, fine. Maybe it’s kind of funny.’

‘I didn’t think you even knew what space meant,’ Dennis says, sounding almost high, voice softened. ‘You’ve never shown any signs of that before.’

‘I know,’ Mac says, eyes flicking to Dennis and away. ‘And – look, I _am_ sorry, dude. I didn’t – I shouldn’t have, I know. But I said sorry, and you said –’

‘Just because I said I forgive you, it doesn’t mean it’s actually okay,’ Dennis tells him, laughter flattened into nothing in the space of a second, leaving an empty space in his chest. He squeezes his eyes shut again. He isn’t going to cry in front of Mac. He won’t. He should have eaten more than that stupid sandwich today, and then maybe he wouldn’t be lurching from one emotion to another like this. God, he’s tired. He’s so, so tired. ‘You have to learn to read between the lines.’

‘What the hell does that mean?’ Mac asks, bewildered. ‘I’m supposed to just know when you tell me things that are bullshit? Like I can read your mind?’

‘Yes,’ Dennis snaps. ‘Yes, I wanted you to read my fucking mind, Mac, how about that?’

Mac scoffs. ‘Great,’ he says sarcastically. ‘I guess next time you’re telling me something that seems true I’ll just remember to assume you’re lying, and that nothing is really okay like you said, and that you actually hate me even though you said I was forgiven, and –’

‘God, shut up!’ Dennis spits. His voice is trembling; his cheeks are wet and cold. _Fuck._ He swipes at them angrily. ‘Do you ever fucking listen to yourself? How are you the victim here? I’m the one you were harassing, Mac, if anything _I’m_ the person who should be –’

‘And I told you I was sorry, Dennis, but if you won’t forgive me then I can’t make up for it!’ Mac half-shouts, pushing back on his chair so he can glare Dennis full in the face. ‘I don’t know what you want me to do!’

‘That’s not how it works, Mac! I can’t forgive you if you don’t understand what you did wrong!’

‘But I do, I –’

‘No, you don’t!’

‘Yes, I –’

‘You never _asked me_ ,’ Dennis spills out helplessly. Mac’s mouth snaps shut, his face blank with surprise. ‘You never asked, you just kept – _doing_ it, touching me and pushing me, and you never asked, you didn’t wait – for me to –’

‘Dennis,’ Mac starts, absolutely horrified. ‘Dennis, I’m sorry, I didn’t – please don’t cry –’

‘ _Stop it_ ,’ Dennis hisses, shunting himself sideways so he can stare Mac straight in the eye. ‘Stop interrupting me! Stop cutting across me, and yelling, and getting in my space, and telling me what to do, and being – you! God! It’s always, _always_ too much with you, everything, everything you do is too much!’

‘I’m sorry!’ Mac says, his eyes so wide they take up half his fucking face. ‘I’m sorry, I’ll go, I –’

‘ _No_ ,’ Dennis snarls, grabbing Mac by the front of his hoodie and yanking him in so that Mac stumbles, goes to his knees in front of Dennis, his eyes flickering down to Dennis’s mouth and then wrenching upwards, blinking, huge, confused. He’s breathing hard; Dennis can feel it on his face, puffs of hot air punctuating the cold. ‘Don’t go, you’re not gonna fucking go, you’re going to stay here until we finish this.’

‘But you just told me I –’

‘I can’t get away from you, whatever I do,’ Dennis tells him, his voice scratchy and raw. Mac shuts up, swaying toward him as if hypnotised. ‘And you can’t get away from me. That’s how things are. That’s how things _always_ are.’

They're frozen for a long moment, breathing each other’s air.

‘I thought you didn’t want them to be like that anymore,’ Mac says in a small voice. ‘You kept telling me, you kept saying –’

‘You’re still not listening to me,’ Dennis tells him. He looks down at his white-knuckled fist clenched in the front of Mac’s hoodie and consciously loosens it, although he doesn’t let go. Mac doesn’t seem to notice, so intent is he on Dennis’s face. ‘I said, I can’t get away from you.’

‘Okay,’ Mac says slowly. He swallows hard and licks his lips. He spells out his next sentence as if Dennis will deduct points for each incorrect syllable. ‘And you don’t … want … to?’

Dennis doesn’t say anything, just sits and stays and watches Mac’s face change as he tries to understand. 

‘You don’t want to.’ Mac says again, his voice firmer even as the furrow between his eyebrows deepens. ‘And you don’t want me to get away, either. That’s why you’re being so weird about the apartment. Why didn’t you just say something when I asked you, man? I would never have left if you’d just asked me to stay.’

He says it with such an absolute lack of guile that Dennis wants to grab him by the shoulders and shake him until some self-preservation instincts fall out. How does he live like this, everything happening on the outside where everyone can see? Even if Dennis could verbalise the crawling sensation at the back of his throat right now Mac probably still wouldn’t really understand: the last time he experienced significant emotional turmoil, he dealt with it by performing a five-minute long professional grade interpretive dance in front of a crowd of convicted criminals. Mac wears his vulnerability front and centre, like other men wear strength; Dennis at least has the decency to try and hide his.

‘You wanted to go,’ he forces out eventually, because the idea of speaking ‘I didn’t know how’ into existence is too mortifying to contemplate.

'Only because I thought you wanted me to,’ Mac argues. He licks his lips, clearly trying hard to string the right words together. ‘If we're actually talking about all this then, like, can we talk about how mean you've been to me since you got back from North Dakota? And – kind of before you left, too?’

Dennis stiffens. 'I didn't say we could talk about that.’

'Tough shit,’ Mac says shortly. 'If I'm getting roasted for coming onto you – again – then you're getting roasted for being an asshole, Dennis. What the hell has been with you, man? It's like you forgot we're best friends or something.’

'Do you still think we are?’ Dennis asks before he can stop himself, and then has to tighten his grip again to stop Mac recoiling from him. 'No, I'm not – I'm not being mean, I just – I was asking, really.’

'Asking if we're still friends?’ Mac asks, looking down at Dennis's grip warily.

'Asking if we're _best_ friends.’

Mac looks at him. ‘You’re always gonna be my best friend,’ he says bluntly, as if he's delivering bad news. ‘I don't know how you feel about it, man, but that's what I think.’

Dennis swallows past the lump in his throat: it’s hard, it hurts. He’s holding on to Mac’s hoodie so tight the metal of the zipper is biting into the palm of his hand. He must be close to stretching the material, but Mac doesn’t say anything about it. For the first time in weeks, it doesn’t seem so hard to believe that he would let the fabric tear, the fibres separating one by one, and still stay on his knees in front of Dennis, waiting for it to be okay for him to stand up.

'Even though you think I've been an asshole?’

Mac rolls his eyes. ‘Yeah,’ he says begrudgingly. 'In sickness and in health, right? Til death do us part, or whatever.’

Dennis stares at him.

'That's,’ he starts. 'That's from marriage vows, Mac. You know that, right?’

'Yeah,’ Mac mumbles, gaze dropping as he flushes a bold shade of red. 'I know that. It was just like, an example. Of the kind of thing people say.’

'Okay,’ Dennis says. There’s a growing warmth in the pit of his stomach that he can’t bring himself to stamp out with harder words than that. Part of him is piping up even now that he should reiterate one more time what he’s sure Mac already knows – that there’s no chance, that it’s never going to happen. That it’s not what Dennis wants. But there’s no one else around to hear this conversation and Mac isn’t going to tell and maybe it means something, that they aren’t even together and Mac still feels that way. He feels that way about Dennis even though Dennis hasn’t let Mac touch him for months. 'Whatever you say, man.’

Mac eyes him. 'What're you grinning about? It's not funny, you know.’

Dennis sniffs, and Mac’s face softens.

'It's kind of funny,’ Dennis tells him.

_'You're_ kind of funny.’

'Oh, real mature, man.’

'Whatever.’ Mac rolls his neck, wincing. ‘Can I get off the ground now? My knees hurt.’

'We're not on the ground, we're on the roof,’ Dennis retorts automatically.

Mac gives him a look and Dennis rolls his eyes, unlatching his fingers from Mac's shirt. Mac grips the arm of the folding chair for support and gets up with another wince. He drags the chair closer to Dennis before he sits down again.

'Can we make a deal?’ Mac asks, when they're both settled and sipping their beers.

Dennis tenses up. 'Depends what it is.’

'I promise I'll try to listen to you more, so long as you promise to actually like, tell me stuff when you're mad or whatever, instead of just telling me you hate me and scratching me and stuff,’ Mac says. He's shooting cautious glances at Dennis; Dennis can see out the corner of his eye. ‘You can't just wait for me to read your mind, man. You'll be waiting forever.’

Five different jokes about Mac's stupidity jump to mind but Dennis doesn't say any of them. His jaw works for a second. The ironic thing is, it's not so much that Mac can't read his mind but that he always does it at the wrong fucking moments – the ones where what Dennis needs most in the world is to hide and stay hidden, for Mac to pretend he doesn’t know where to look.

But if he gives Mac this – if Mac starts paying more attention – then maybe Dennis won't have to actually ask him to move back in. Maybe Mac will get there all by himself.

And that’s the endgame here, right? To get Mac back into the apartment. That’s the goal.

'Okay,’ he says at length. 'Deal.’


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i've added some new tags!! happy friday!!

On a Monday evening in the middle of March, a couple of weeks after their conversation on the roof, Mac hesitates when climbing out of the Range Rover. They’ve just rolled up in front of his apartment building, having spent the last hour eating approximately their body weight in pasta; Dennis already has regrets.

‘What?’ Dennis asks, unnerved. ‘You forget your purse?’

Mac shoots him a glare. He gets back in the car, slamming the door. ‘Don’t be an asshole, okay? I’m trying something here.’

Dennis shifts in his seat, gripping the edge in one hand. He turns to look at Mac head-on. ‘Well, by all means. Amaze me.’

‘I said _don’t_ be an asshole.’

‘What, so I can’t say anything at all?’

Mac takes a deep breath. Dennis notices one hand wrapping around the door handle, ready to pull it open.

‘Okay,’ he says, his mouth a little dry. ‘Fine. What is it?’

‘I was going to ask,’ Mac asks, eyes fixed on the handle he’s holding, thumb tracing the chrome curve gently, ‘if you wanted to come up for a drink. Like a beer, or whatever.’

Dennis blinks. He readjusts his grip on his seat; white-knuckled, hard.

‘A drink,’ he repeats. ‘Like. In your apartment.’

‘Yeah.’ Mac’s voice is calculatedly casual. He clears his throat. ‘Now might be a good time, if you wanted, ‘cause Rex is out. Or even if he wasn’t, some other time, we could still –’

‘No,’ Dennis snaps, before he can stop himself. He breathes in quickly, feeling his nostrils flare. ‘No, I’m – I’m good, on drinks. I don’t need – I’m good. Thanks.’

Mac stares straight ahead for a couple of seconds without blinking. Then he seems to shake himself, a familiar expression coming over his face.

‘Alright, man,’ he says, sounding tired. ‘I’ll see you at work.’

‘Right,’ Dennis says hoarsely. His throat feels thick. ‘See you at –’

But Mac doesn’t wait for him to finish, already slamming the door.

\---

‘So you guys are coming to the studio opening next Friday, right?’ Dee asks out of the blue the next day.

‘What studio opening?’ Dennis asks absently. He’s been trying to catch Mac’s eye for the last hour, but Mac’s been studiously avoiding him, which in Dennis’s opinion is pretty fucking unfair. Mac has to understand his reasoning, right? What a stupid question, asking if Dennis wanted to hang out with him and Rex. As if they could be some kind of happy family, with everybody knowing that Dennis gets to go home alone at the end of the night.

Mac could come to his apartment, though. _Their_ apartment. Dennis would be okay with that. Mac could come up to the apartment and they could have a few beers, and it’d be just like it was before. A little.

Or would that be even worse?

Dee blinks.

‘The acting studio,’ she reminds him, slightly disbelieving. ‘ _My_ acting studio. Are you really – why am I surprised? God.’ She takes a deep breath. ‘The thing I’ve been working on for the last two months. The acting studio that I’m opening with Artemis. You know, Reynolds and Dubois? My whole – it’s been a whole _thing,_ Dennis!’

‘What acting studio?’ Mac chips in, frowning over his beer. Dennis looks up. ‘I don’t remember you ever talking about this before, Dee.’

‘Why would you?’ Dee asks, casting her arms wide and looking up at the ceiling. ‘Never mind that I’ve been talking about it for weeks! It doesn’t directly involve you, so why would you care?’

‘Well, exactly.’ Dennis quirks an eyebrow. ‘Was that supposed to be sarcastic?’

‘Oh my God.’ Dee presses both hands to her face. Come to think of it, Dennis does recall a certain manic energy animating her for the last month or so, always fraying around the edges over some new task. She’s been on the phone to Artemis a lot, but he assumed that was for some pathetic spinster reason. ‘Whatever. Whatever. I don’t care. I just need to know numbers. Are you coming or not?’

‘Is that why you’ve been wound so tight lately?’ Dennis asks. ‘And why you’re never around? We really needed your help yesterday and you didn’t even show up!’

Dee shuts her eyes.

‘Are you coming,’ she grits out, ‘or not?’

‘Well, sure.’ Dennis looks at Mac, who shrugs without meeting his eye. ‘If there’s nothing else – oh, wait. Friday?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I actually can’t,’ Dennis says, feeling marginally guilty about it. Him and Mac go to dinner every Friday now, kind of a monthly dinner 2.0. Dee doesn’t need to know about it. The mood she’s in, she’d only sneer and prod, tear it to shreds. ‘I have a thing.’

‘A thing,’ Dee repeats, eyes narrowing. ‘And what about you, Mac?’ she asks, turning to Mac and raising an eyebrow. ‘You free next Friday? Like, literally more than a week from now?’

Mac hesitates. Dennis feels his own face turning red, as if they’re connected to the same power grid. At least Mac doesn’t want to give up weekly dinner either, even if he is still mad.

This whole thing would be so much easier if Mac was remotely capable of secrecy, but he’s getting less convincing every time they get called out like this. He keeps looking to Dennis for direction, as if waiting for Dennis to interject, throw in the towel completely and tell the gang they’re –

What? What are they doing?

Dennis fidgets in his seat, staring down intently at his Twitter feed without taking any of it in. They’re going to dinner, that’s what. They’re hanging out. They go out, and they don’t stay in, and nobody gets to ask them jack shit about it. That’s all.

‘Come on, Mac,’ Dee presses maliciously. ‘It’s not like you to have plans.’ She pauses. ‘Ever.’

‘Hey,’ Mac says, frowning. ‘Actually, I do have plans that Friday. I’ve got a – a thing.’

‘A thing,’ Dee says tonelessly. ‘You’ve also got a _thing._ Like how Dennis has a _thing_.’

‘Getting weird now,’ Charlie calls from one of the booths. ‘I don’t want to hear about either of their things.’

Dee flips him off without even looking over her shoulder and continues. ‘Let me get this straight,’ she says, her voice so hard it could break diamonds. ‘Both of you have unavoidable commitments next Friday that you can’t cancel or change in order to come and support me, your friend of over twenty years and/or sister, on one of the most important nights of her life.’

‘Friend?’ Dennis says sceptically. ‘I mean, sister, sure. But let’s not overdo it here.’

‘Well,’ Mac hedges. He’s trying to catch Dennis’s eye again, but Dennis stoically ignores him. This is for the greater good, after all. Dee doesn’t really need them at her studio opening, but Dennis _definitely_ needs to try that new Chinese place that just opened up down the street from the apartment. They would have tried it this week, but they’ve re-established their standing reservation at Guigino’s for the second Friday of every month, and Dennis doesn’t like to break with routine. ‘Maybe –’

‘I know I couldn’t,’ Dennis says nonchalantly, clicking on a random Twitter link. Some depressing article about environmental collapse, which is marginally less stressful than this conversation. ‘My thing’s pretty set in stone.’

‘Or maybe not,’ Mac finishes. ‘No, definitely not. I just remembered, the guy – uh, they’re only in town for one night.’

He winces, already aware of his mistake before Dee pounces.

‘So it’s a date?’ she asks. ‘Not a _thing._ A date.’

Dennis looks up despite himself, curious about how Mac is possibly going to handle this. He’s squirming on his barstool, turning red. He never talks about going on dates or hooking up around the gang anymore, although he used to lie through his teeth about both back when he was pretending to be straight.

He’d tell Dennis if anything was happening, though. He’d have to. Dennis is sure of it.

‘Well,’ Mac tries. ‘I mean, we haven’t really put a label on anything yet. It’s kind of –’

‘Why are you interrogating him about this, anyway?’ Dennis cuts in. His heart is beating fast with anger, some thin but potent fear winding its way through his stomach. ‘He said he can’t go, so he can’t go. What, are you worried it’s going to bomb? ‘Cause I think that’s a fair concern, Dee.’

‘No,’ Dee snaps, finally distracted. ‘It’s not like I wanted either of you there anyway. Artemis is the one who – well, I hope you both have a great time. Hope you have a great time on your _date,_ Mac.’

Mac doesn’t say anything. He’s still watching Dennis, who refuses to meet his eye.

\---

They meet up at Marcy’s the next day for lunch. It’s quiet; there’s hardly anyone around, as usual.

‘I can’t believe how many carbs you eat now,’ Dennis tells Mac, watching in morbid fascination as Mac muscles down another cheeseburger. ‘How are you doing it? And please don’t take that as some kind of facile compliment rather than a genuine question. I want answers.’

‘What d’you mean, how’m I doing it?’ Mac asks through his mouthful.

Dennis scowls, shoving a bunch of napkins in his face. They’re sat side by side in their preferred booth rather than opposite each other, so it’s much easier to telegraph his disgust.

Mac rolls his eyes but takes the napkins. His attention is half on Dennis, half on the old episode of _Ancient Aliens_ playing on the TV opposite; a show Mac considers to be roughly on par with _Blue Planet_ in terms of factual accuracy.

‘How are you staying, like –’ Dennis waves a hand at Mac’s general self. ‘You know.’

Mac shrugs, looking a little uncomfortable. ‘M’not. Not really. Put on three pounds in the last week.’

‘Really?’ Dennis sits up a little at that, dragging his eyes over Mac’s body, folded into the booth. He imagines the soft weight, clinging to Mac’s frame. Does he look different, under his clothes? Would Dennis be able to tell, if he saw Mac naked? ‘Doesn’t look like it to me.’

‘Well, I have.’ Mac eyes him before looking back at the TV. ‘I got what I needed out of it, so.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The dance,’ Mac specifies, keeping his eyes firmly on the screen. ‘I got in shape for the dance, and then I did it, so I don’t have to stay in shape anymore.’

‘It was all about that?’ Dennis asks, frowning. ‘I thought you did it for the gang, for like a scheme or something.’

Mac shrugs. ‘I mean, I thought we could use it, sure. But mostly I needed to get in shape to be able to throw Martina around, you know?’

‘Huh.’

Dennis watches Mac eat for a while in silence. Mac’s never talked to him about the dance; not voluntarily, anyway. He hates talking about it with anyone but Frank, a division so unfair that it brings a lump to Dennis’s throat. As if Frank could understand parts of Mac that Dennis couldn’t. As if Frank could muster up the bandwidth.

Anyway. Dennis might never have seen the dance, but he’s started to notice more, lately, how Mac might have been able to do something like that. It’s in the way he walks, sometimes; the way his posture changes when he’s on autopilot, lost in his own head. Shoulders straight, light on his feet. A learned flexibility; a grace that never used to exist. The way he carefully keeps out of Dennis’s personal space even in the cramped confines of the bar, bending his body into improbable positions to avoid brushing against him. Such an absence of touch that it makes Dennis’s skin as hot as if Mac _had_ touched him.

It’s hard to know what questions to ask, now that Mac has brought it up himself. Dennis doesn’t even know why he’s interested, except perhaps that the dance is something Mac did entirely without recourse to Dennis – what Dennis would think or say, whether it made him think any differently of Mac.

And that, in and of itself, is a novelty.

‘Do you wish I’d seen it?’ he asks eventually.

Mac swallows his bite and licks his lips. He doesn’t look at Dennis, eyes still trained on the TV screen although Dennis can tell he’s not paying attention to it anymore.

‘Mac,’ he says insistently.

Mac sighs and sits back, wiping his hands on the pile of napkins.

‘No,’ he says, firm. ‘I don’t think it was your thing, dude.’

Dennis bridles at this. ‘It could have been my thing,’ he argues. ‘I’m cultured. I like – ballet. I listen to, like, Ludovico Einaudi.’

Mac snorts. ‘How do you like ballet, bro?’ he asks. ‘You’ve never watched that shit in your life. Anyway, that’s not what I meant.’

‘Well, what did you mean?’

Mac eyes him again, leaning his head against the back of the booth. The look on his face makes Dennis’s pulse thump, and not in an enjoyable way; he looks on edge, prepared to defend himself against something Dennis didn’t even know he was throwing.

‘What?’ Dennis insists. ‘Tell me. For God’s sake, Mac, I know Frank came out to see it and you guys had a whole thing – he had a whole epiphany about it, so come on. What makes me less cultured than _Frank?_ ’

‘It wasn’t like that.’ Mac frowns at him. ‘Just wasn’t your thing, dude. I knew it the first time I ever practiced with Martina. I was like, _man, Dennis would fucking hate this_.’ His mouth twists. ‘And I was right.’

Dennis blinks.

‘You don’t know that,’ he says, strangely hurt. ‘I don’t even know what _it_ is.’

‘No.’ Mac shakes his head. The closed-off look on his face is making the chicken Caesar salad Dennis had eaten earlier churn uneasily in his stomach. ‘It was like – it was _me,_ you know? It was the most me I’ve ever been, and I thought –’ he stops for a second, frowning, before he carries on in the same blank voice, like all this is something he’s come to terms with a long time ago. ‘I knew you wouldn’t want to see that.’

Dennis opens his mouth and closes it again, staring at the side of Mac’s head. He doesn’t know how they got here. They were having a dumb conversation about carbs five minutes ago and now it’s turned into this whole _thing,_ the air between them weighted and heavy. Mac’s been a little off ever since Dee ambushed them yesterday – since the thing in the Range Rover, if Dennis is being honest – but this is a whole other level. It feels like one of those conversations which seems to be about one thing on the surface, but actually has something else running underneath. Dennis hates conversations like that. How is he supposed to win if he doesn’t even know what game he’s playing?

‘It’s okay, man. I’m not mad,’ Mac tells him. His voice is a little gentler. ‘Just how things are.’

Dennis frowns at him, but Mac just smiles before he turns his gaze back to the TV, calm and resigned and so fucking _reasonable_ it makes Dennis want to stomp his foot and bang on the table like a child. _But you don’t_ know _,_ he wants to burst out, the words bubbling up in his chest. Who is Mac to take the high road here, pretending to be the adult – how can he tell Dennis that it’s okay, as if Dennis hasn’t worn himself to pieces trying to get back what Mac assumes they’ve already lost?

‘You didn’t give me a chance.’ Dennis swallows, trying to get a handle on the hurt in his voice. ‘If you did it again now, I’d come.’

‘Well, I’m not.’ Mac says firmly, eyes on his plate. ‘So you can’t. Anyway, I was thinking about something. That whole thing yesterday with Dee, it didn’t feel right.’

‘Oh.’ Dennis shifts in his seat, heartbeat lurching up into his ears. ‘What about it?’

‘I think we should go.’

‘What?’ Dennis blinks. ‘To the stupid studio opening?’

Mac nods.

‘Why?’

‘Because.’ Mac fidgets around for a second, then squares himself and turns in his seat to look at Dennis properly. ‘Because I think it’s kind of like what the dance meant to me, okay? I don’t want to get all weird about it, and it’s obviously lame as hell and they’re going to fold in like, six months tops, but I still think we should go.’ He pauses. ‘Besides, there’s gonna be free booze.’

Dennis takes a minute to regulate his breathing. His muscles are braced. What had he thought Mac was going to say? Stupid. 

‘Okay,’ he says slowly. ‘I mean it’s not like I’m gonna do Friday night dinner by myself if you’re not gonna be there, it’s just – really? You really want to go and yuk it up with Dee and her gross acting friends?’

‘Not really,’ Mac admits. ‘But Artemis’ll be there, and she’s fun. Plus, look at it this way, man – Dee’ll never expect it, and we can hold it over her for _years_.’

Dennis has more than enough leverage over Dee to last him a lifetime; he’s not particularly interested in gaining more at the cost of their Friday night dinner. But something about the way Mac is holding himself tells Dennis this is bigger than that. Mac’s actually been trying to think up reasons why Dennis could be persuaded to go to the dumb studio opening. He’s _trying._ It must be important, to him, for whatever stupid reason.

There’s no way to change what happened six months ago, as much as Dennis would like to think he’d be there front row centre, waving a rainbow flag right along with Frank, if he got another chance. But he won’t. He can only affect what happens now.

‘Fine,’ he says. ‘Deal. But we’re not shaking on it, your hands are disgusting. Use a fork, for the love of God.’

‘No one uses a fork for fries, dude. Not even you. You don’t like it, you can always sit somewhere else,’ Mac tells him. It’s belligerent but more relaxed than he was a minute ago, before Dennis acquiesced. ‘Why did you even sit round this side anyway?’ he asks, side-eying Dennis’s close proximity. The levity in his voice goes a little forced. ‘No one sits next to each other in a booth. Only teenagers and gross couples.’

‘I don’t know,’ Dennis responds. He shifts in his seat, prickle of heat going along his shoulders. ‘I didn’t really think about it. Maybe I just wanted to steal your fries.’

Mac rolls his eyes, but he scoots the plate a little closer to Dennis, a small smile on his face. He’d get a whole other order of fries if he thought Dennis would let him get away with it: his recurring quest to feed Dennis has returned full throttle since they started hanging out again. He’d be ridiculous, if Dennis let him.

Dennis’s heart is still beating strangely hard; the nerves in his hands are sparking with tension he doesn’t understand. He looks at the empty opposite side of the booth. Why _didn’t_ he sit down there when they came in here? It’s weird. Mac’s right, it’s weird. So why did he do it? Dennis thinks back through their movements when they first came into the diner. Maybe he had sat down opposite at first, and then he went to the restroom, and when he came back he just – no, that isn’t what happened. He slid in next to Mac when they first came in here, without thinking about it, and then he did it again when he came back from the restroom. So he actually did it twice, both times when he had the opportunity to keep himself at a distance. Why did he do that? Why didn’t he even question it until Mac pointed it out? Why does it feel so normal?

He looks around the diner and as expected, there’s no sight of anyone they know. No one who could possibly require an explanation of what they’re doing here, what Dennis is doing. Which is good, because Dennis doesn’t think he could explain himself right now if someone gave him a whiteboard and a brand-new set of multi-coloured markers. _I knew you wouldn’t want to see that,_ Mac had said. That’s what Mac thinks of him. 

Mac’s still eating; completely oblivious, even after putting himself out there like that. He might as well have gotten up on the table and laid flat on his back like a sacrifice. Just because it comes so easily for him doesn’t give him the right to make assumptions about other people. Mac lives his life on the principle that talking about something makes it real, and before that nothing counts. But what about all the stuff people don’t talk about? Is any of that less real, just because it hasn’t been spoken? Dennis can’t believe that. He felt that absence of speech every day in North Dakota; the stupid, stupid space inside his body that Mac takes up.

Dennis’s heart is pounding, now; nearly beating right out of his chest. It’s stupid, but it’s real. Or – it’s stupid _and_ it’s real.

Maybe it can be both.

Dennis reaches out and puts his hand on Mac’s leg.

Mac freezes, ketchup-soaked fry halfway to his mouth. He stares down at his lap, the pale shape of Dennis’s hand against the faded navy blue, about halfway up his thigh. Dennis stares at it too, second guessing the placement. It would be awkward to move it now, while they’re both looking. It should be clear enough, right? Halfway to Mac’s crotch. That’s not something you can just shrug off as friendly.

‘Uh, Dennis,’ Mac says, in the hesitant voice that makes Dennis twitch because it always sounds like Mac is trying trick him into something but is too scared to really pull it off. ‘Did you mean to put your hand on my leg?’

Dennis’s hand spasms. Mac drops the fry.

‘Yes,’ Dennis says stiffly. ‘Obviously I did, or it wouldn’t be there.’

‘Okay,’ Mac says, clearly trying to sound calm. He hasn’t blinked once since Dennis touched him. ‘So, do you – can I ask why, um, why exactly have you –’

‘Jesus Christ, dude. Are you having a seizure? What does it usually mean when someone puts their hand on your leg?’

‘I don’t know, oh my God!’ Mac bursts out. His eyes flick from Dennis’s hand to his face and back down again, then at the empty booth opposite them, and then back down. His voice gets quieter, which Dennis appreciates: if Mac is going to have a breakdown about this, he’d like to keep it between themselves. He already feels like his skin is being turned inside out. ‘I just want to be, like – I was just making sure that –’

‘Do you want me to take it off?’ Dennis asks, pouring 80% of the energy in his body into keeping his voice neutral. He has no idea what he’s doing, but he does appear to be doing it, and he’d like Mac to get on board. He’d thought Mac _was_ on board; for most of their lives, Mac has been the one driving the fucking train.

‘No,’ Mac says hurriedly. He actually slaps a hand down on top of Dennis’s for a second before he pulls it off again like he got scalded. It leaves a lick of salt on Dennis’s skin. Mac’s hands hang around in mid-air, noticeably shaking, before he grabs a handful of napkins and starts trying to clean them off. ‘I’m sorry, I’m just trying to be – respectful –’

‘Who are you?’ Dennis wonders out loud. ‘You want to be respectful – _you_ want to be respectful of my space?’

‘Someone has to be,’ Mac snaps, balling up the napkins and throwing them on his plate. ‘If we’re all just going around now putting hands on people’s legs in public restaurants and –’

‘Okay, never mind,’ Dennis says, pulling his hand back sharply. He can feel his cheeks glowing. Mac is frowning at him, Dennis can feel it, but he can’t make himself look. Maybe if he moves to the other side of the booth it might not feel so bad, so close. ‘Clearly this was a bad idea, I –’

‘I didn’t say that,’ Mac interrupts, and then he picks up Dennis’s wrist from where it was lying in his lap and he pulls it back over, cradling Dennis’s hand firmly between both of his. Dennis stares down at it. He doesn’t pull away. ‘I just meant like, I have a history of reading things wrong, with us, and I didn’t want – I didn’t want to fuck it up again. You put your hand wherever you want on me, Den. Wherever you want.’

Dennis doesn’t say anything for a little while after that. He just sits there with Mac’s voice drifting around in his head, wondering if Mac realises that he’s rubbing Dennis’s hand gently between his fingers, stroking it with his thumbs. His skin is so warm. He isn’t making Dennis _say_ anything. He’s just sat there, holding his hand, letting him be. His voice got higher and more nervous the longer he was talking but he’s waiting anyway, to see what Dennis says. It feels as if he would wait a very long time.

‘Wherever I want?’ Dennis asks eventually, clearing his throat. He looks down at the way Mac is touching him and then up, at Mac’s face – and then away, at the parking lot, outside, God, _away._ ‘You really mean that?’

Mac’s hands have stilled.

‘Yeah,’ he says. His voice is fucked: as worn and dry as if he’s just been belting himself hoarse at church choir. He swallows and tries again. ‘Yeah. Yes. So long as –’

‘So long as what?’

‘So long as this isn’t a joke.’ Mac’s eyes dart away from him and then back again. ‘It’s not a joke, right? You wouldn’t do that, I mean, not after – not after everything.’

Dennis’s throat works.

‘It’s not a joke,’ he says. His voice is very thin. He deserved that, probably. It doesn’t mean it was any easier to hear.

‘Okay,’ Mac says. ‘Yeah. You kind of look like – it’s not a joke, so. Okay.’

Dennis clears his throat. ‘You sure?’ he makes himself ask.

‘Yes.’ Mac squeezes his hand, hard. ‘Yes, I’m sure, yes. Yes.’

‘Okay, then,’ Dennis says, fighting to keep his voice even. He lets himself look at Mac for just one second before he pulls his hand away and stands up. Mac’s whole body sways up toward him as he goes; Dennis registers it with the giddy disbelief of someone surveying a cliff they’re about to jump off. ‘Then maybe we should go someplace else.’

‘Someplace –’ Mac repeats, quirking an eyebrow.

‘Somewhere more private,’ Dennis says impatiently. If Mac makes him get more specific than that, Dennis is going to burst a blood vessel. Is it usually this humiliating for people, asking for what they want? Does everyone get this creepy crawling sensation down the back of their neck every time they make a move on someone? God. It’s a miracle the human race has survived this long, if that’s the case.

It helps a little that Mac seems to be swallowing his own tongue around his reply.

‘Okay,’ he gets out, still watching Dennis with wide, disbelieving eyes. ‘Okay, yeah. Let’s go.’

\---

Mac’s eyes bore into the side of Dennis’s head the whole ride home.

For his part, Dennis keeps his eyes firmly on the road. His thoughts are zipping around his skull, pinging up against each other and ricocheting away again. He barely remembers how to shift gears. What if they get back to the apartment and Mac expects him to be some kind of supernova in bed, some perfect stereotype of unleashed gay repression? Dennis has never fucked another man but he’s seen enough stuff in porn that it’s engendered some worrying expectations. He kissed a couple of guys in college but only when he was high, detached enough from his body that he wasn’t really aware of what he was doing, and it never went any further than some light groping. Kissing men can’t be that different from kissing women, but fucking – God, that’s going to be different.

Shit. His hands are sweating. This seems like the wrong moment to be remembering that Mac bought a sex doll of Dennis while he was in North Dakota and fucked it until his dick was raw. Incredibly, the reminder still doesn’t make Dennis want to have sex with him any less. If anything, he’s now feeling a little concerned that the doll might have an edge on him. A doll can’t complain, after all. It can’t have fat rolls and thinning hair – thinning slowly, but still – and it won’t answer back. A doll can’t come too fast or too slowly, take too much work. It can’t get tired. It can’t cry.

It can’t touch Mac back, though. It can put up with everything, but it can never participate. So Dennis will just have to focus on touching Mac, making it good for him, and then they’ll both be clear on which version of Dennis was better in the sack.

‘What are you thinking about?’ Mac asks.

‘I really don’t think you want to know.’

‘I do,’ Mac insists. ‘Are you nervous? Are you excited? I’m both. I think more excited than nervous, but it’s kind of hard to tell –’

‘Jesus Christ,’ Dennis mutters as they pull up outside the apartment and get out of the car.

‘Because you know,’ Mac continues, ‘a lot of the time, nerves and excitement feel mostly the same, when everything’s swirling around in your stomach and you kind of feel like you have to hurl, but in a really good way –’

‘You feel like you have to hurl?’ Dennis asks, cocking an eyebrow at Mac over his shoulder as they walk up the stairs. ‘That’s great. Cool. This is going to go really well.’

‘Not _really_ hurl,’ Mac tells him. Dennis can hear the roll of his eyes without having to turn around and see it. ‘You know what I mean. It’s – it feels good, it feels like –’

‘Butterflies,’ Dennis says, turning the key in the door. ‘That’s what people call it, idiot.’

‘Right, butterflies.’

Mac follows him inside and looks around curiously, like he’s wondering if things are going to look different. That’s when Dennis remembers that Mac hasn’t been back to the apartment since he left, not once since that fucking nightmare of a day, and Dennis hasn’t changed things at all, hasn’t hardly moved a pencil. Even after him and Dee had cleaned it, he’d tried really hard to put things back how they were before. It had seemed important.

It’s weird, he realises now. Really fucking weird. He’s going to have to start hiding things like this if they’re going to – if they’re going to be. If.

He squeezes his keys too tight, metal teeth biting into his hand, as he watches Mac take it in. Part of him wants to make excuses for how pathetic it must look, the shrine-like nature of every small reminder. But he feels like if he tried to talk then his voice would break, and everything he would say would be wrong. He did okay, back at the diner. He hasn’t fucked it up so far.

So he doesn’t say anything, just stands there twisting his keys in his hands. He tries not to hold his breath.

‘Dennis,’ Mac says, his voice different than when he was rambling his way up the stairs.

‘Don’t,’ Dennis warns. He closes his eyes and breathes out long and slow and careful. ‘Don’t, just – we came here for a reason, right? So let’s – let’s just –’

‘Get down to it?’ Mac asks, raising one eyebrow. He looks like he’s trying not to laugh, and that’s not fair. Mac is supposed to be grateful. He’s supposed to worshipping at Dennis’s feet – he should be, considering how long he’s been pining. He should be so thankful to be given this chance that he’d never even dream of laughing at Dennis’s inexperience; so glad to even be allowed to touch Dennis that he comes all over himself the instant Dennis touches him. That would be ideal, as then it would never become apparent that Dennis doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing in bed with another man. There’s no way he can pretzel himself into most of the positions he’s seen on the internet.

Maybe Mac will give him a free pass if it sucks, this first time. That would only be fair, right? Considering how long it’s taken?

‘Yep,’ Dennis replies frostily. He sets the keys down on top of the coffee table and turns to Mac, rubbing both hands together like a goddamn youth camp leader. The hair on his arms is literally standing up with embarrassment but he can’t make himself stop. ‘Okay. Yes. Let’s –’

‘Hey, Dennis,’ Mac interrupts him, stepping into Dennis’s personal space so easily that Dennis is momentarily silenced. He must be able to hear Dennis’s breathing, loud and fast. ‘It’s gonna be fine. Just chill, okay?’

‘You don’t know it’s gonna be fine,’ Dennis counters. He swallows hard. He’s kissed so many people, so many. He’s kissed hundreds of women, so many he can’t remember their faces or names. He doesn’t know how he did any of that, how he could stand in front of a person who knows that he wants that and not hide his face, not try and exit the situation immediately. It hurts just to know that Mac is looking at him; it sticks needles into the backs of his thighs. ‘You _can’t_ know that.’

Mac hesitates, and then tugs on Dennis’s hands, gently unfolding his arms from across his chest. Dennis’s breathing stutters at the feel of his bare skin. Mac wraps his hands around Dennis’s forearms in a loose grip, fingertips brushing his elbows. He holds on like he’s bracing himself; like he’s bracing both of them.

It’s risky, a touch like that – boxing Dennis in with his body. It could make Dennis even more nervous. But the look on Mac’s face is so careful it doesn’t even feel overtly romantic or sexual, not really. It reminds Dennis of the way he’s held Charlie before, trying to soothe him out of a rage. Or the way he used to touch Mac to calm him down, or even Dee a couple of times – the way they’ve all held each other.

‘Okay, fine. I don’t,’ Mac says. Dennis has to backtrack a little to even remember what he’s talking about. Mac’s hands are warm. His fingertips are stroking gently at the backs of Dennis’s arms, lighting up nerves Dennis didn’t remember he had. He shifts a little on his feet and turns his wrists so he can hold on to Mac, too. ‘But I want to anyway, Dennis. I really, really want to.’

He doesn’t ask, although it would be so easy. It probably hurts him not to say it: _don’t you_? But he doesn’t. He lets Dennis decide.

That’s what does it, in the end.

Dennis keeps his eyes open until the last possible second as he leans in. He’s shaking so hard he can hear the sound of his teeth clicking together. The brush of Mac’s lips against his is very gentle at first, barely a kiss at all. Dennis is aware that they’re both holding their breath, both so afraid of fucking it up that they can’t go all in. A diorama of two people kissing, held up by the tension in their frames. Then Mac takes a shaky breath and deliberately relaxes his posture, letting his shoulders drop. His thumbs brush against the inside of Dennis’s elbows, and the skin is so sensitised that the smallest touch is all it takes. Dennis shivers, his mouth dropping open a little against Mac’s lips. They’re dry on the outside but wet deeper in, so much so that Dennis’s stomach jolts and he makes a small surprised sound and that’s it, right there, that’s it – the exact moment they stop hesitating.

Dennis clutches Mac’s arm in a tight grip, pulling him closer. His throat clicks as he swallows, opening his mouth wider, Mac’s hot tongue slipping inside. Mac smells _good_ , which seems impossible; Mac with his Old Spice and poor hygiene habits – Mac who’s holding him now, his hands inching up Dennis’s arms, fingers struggling to get under his rolled-up sleeves. He smells like sweat and salt and fucking ketchup, it’s terrible; Dennis is going crazy. It must be pheromones. Mac is kissing him and it’s good, it’s hot, it’s perfect. How could Dennis not have known? But he didn’t, he didn’t know.

‘I want to, I want to,’ he mutters when Mac pulls back. They’re both gulping in these huge breaths like they’re about to dive back underwater. Mac lets go of Dennis’s right elbow to frame his face with one big hand. He brushes hair off Dennis’s forehead even though it doesn’t need to be moved; he just seems to want to touch it. ‘Mac, I want –’

He stops.

‘What?’ Mac asks. ‘What do you want?’

His eyes are so big and innocent, asking a question like that, that Dennis has a brief urge to ask for something impossible – something huge and mean and stupid, like asking Mac to rob a bank. Asking Mac to tell Dennis he loves him.

‘No,’ Dennis says stupidly, half in response to his own thoughts. His hands are fretting at the line of Mac’s t-shirt along his shoulders; he can’t figure out what he wants to do first, where he wants to touch. He feels like he’s stolen something big and shiny and valuable and now they’re racing down the highway, sirens and flashing lights in hot pursuit. ‘I just meant, like, I want – in the general sense –’

‘In the general sense,’ Mac repeats, a slow grin spreading across his face. He looks giddy, his pupils blown wide and beautiful, and Dennis has to swallow, swallow hard against the lurch of reckless joy in his throat. ‘Do you think that’s like, smooth or something? You think you’ve got lines –’

‘I don’t think I’ve got lines,’ Dennis says. ‘I don’t think I need lines, with you. Come here.’

He hears Mac’s harsh intake of breath a second before he feels it, the rush against his mouth. Mac’s arms wind tighter around him, clutching him close. He’s so _warm._

He’s big, too. Dennis shivers, raking his palms up Mac’s back and feeling him push into the movement. He makes a low groaning sound into Dennis’s mouth. Mac’s big enough that it’s probably the most noticeable difference from all the other people Dennis has kissed; Dennis doesn’t have to be careful, and he can yank and clutch however he wants. He can pull Mac hard against his body and Mac will go with it, fall into him, make Dennis stumble before they catch themselves, still attached at the lips.

He tries to pull himself back from the edge a little – tries to hold on to himself, tries to breathe. He runs his hands over Mac’s shoulders and down across his arms, feeling the prickle of body hair standing up against his palms. He can tell when he’s hit a good spot because Mac completely forgets how to kiss: his mouth just goes slack under Dennis’s lips, his tongue stops moving so that Dennis ends up kind of licking around his mouth, drawing little hitches of breath out of him. They’re such needy sounds that it catches Dennis by surprise the first couple of times, how hot it is that Mac could sound like that for him, like he needs Dennis to touch him so badly that he can’t stop himself. Sometimes he even holds his breath until Dennis touches him again in the same spot, although Dennis doesn’t think he realises he’s doing it, and that’s hot too, so hot it shoots straight to the tingling nerves at the tips of Dennis’s fingers and toes. Here is something he knows about Mac’s body that even Mac doesn’t know; here is something he’s doing that Mac could never do for himself.

‘Dennis,’ Mac mumbles, pulling back to breathe although he keeps his hands fastened carefully around Dennis’s waist. He kisses Dennis’s neck like he can’t bear to pull away. His nose bumps up clumsily against the underside of Dennis’s jaw, moving like an inexperienced teenager, and something about that – Dennis pauses, his breath hitching. Mac can be young, with him. Mac can be clumsy. He doesn’t think Dennis will laugh.

Mac’s hands drift down to the small of his back, fingers just skimming the top of his ass, and hover uncertainly. Dennis spends a long minute blinking impatiently before he realises Mac is, unbelievably, waiting for _permission._

‘Yes,’ he says, snapping in his urgency. ‘Obviously. It’s fine.’

‘Oh, well, if it’s _fine_ –’

‘Shut up. Just – do it, assume it’s fine unless – unless I tell you otherwise.’

Mac makes a sceptical noise in response, which Dennis is irritated about until Mac moves his hands, fingers splaying over Dennis’s ass, holding him firmly in place. His palms feel hot through the denim of Dennis’s jeans, and it makes Dennis freeze for a long moment. He’s intensely aware that Mac is listening for his reaction, although at least he hasn’t pulled back to look at Dennis’s face.

When Dennis doesn’t say anything, Mac squeezes gently, spreading his fingers wider. It pulls Dennis’s body up a little, brings their bodies closer together so that Dennis can feel Mac’s cock, hot and stiff against his thigh.

Dennis’s hands tighten reflexively across Mac’s back, clutching at handfuls of material. Mac kisses his neck again, his breath coming hot and a little shaky. His mouth leaves a wet trace. It makes Dennis want to pin Mac against something; it makes him want Mac between his legs.

‘Okay?’ Mac murmurs.

He’s pulling at Dennis’s shirt, tucked into the back of his jeans, and when he gets his hands under it and touches Dennis’s bare skin, Dennis shudders violently, his stomach going liquid. Mac’s going to touch him – he’s going to touch Dennis’s cock and it’s going to be good, and Dennis’s skin feels so hot, sparking all over.

‘Yes,’ Dennis remembers to say, the word jerking out of him. He breathes out slowly, the tingle of Mac’s hands on his skin spreading all the way down to his toes. He has to get them moving somehow, propel them through into the bedroom. They can’t just stand here forever, doing barely anything and getting frighteningly close to coming in their pants. But Dennis doesn’t want to extricate himself from Mac’s arms to do it; he hates breaking a moment like that. It’s so much smoother if everyone’s just caught up in it, whipping off clothes in a frenzy and stumbling into the bedroom together attached at the lips, although it’s always a lot harder to coordinate than it looks in the movies. One time Dennis actually got caught in a girl’s zip-up sweater that way, and by the time they’d untangled themselves the mood was completely ruined.

‘I love your ass,’ Mac tells him, jolting Dennis out of his train of thought.

‘You do?’ he asks, too startled to be arrogant about it. Mac nods, kissing his neck again, and Dennis relaxes a little. He leans his head back, murmuring: ‘Of course you do. Tell me.’

‘It’s just so _small,_ ’ Mac says fervently.

Dennis jerks like somebody just dumped a bucket of cold water on his head.

‘Small?’ he repeats, pulling back out of Mac’s grip. ‘You love my ass because it’s _small?_ ’

Mac blinks, his arms comically outstretched, waiting for Dennis to slot back into them. ‘What, you want me to say it’s huge?’

‘No.’ Dennis frowns, resisting the urge to fold his arms across his chest. ‘But it’s not, like – it’s not _tiny_. It’s fine, it’s a perfectly serviceable –’

‘You think your ass is _perfectly serviceable_?’ Mac asks, grinning so wide and sexy that Dennis wants to smack him, and then himself. The last hour has clearly done something to his brain. ‘Wow, yeah. I can see how that would have gone down well, if I’d said that.’

‘Well, maybe not that, but – you could have said a lot of other things, Mac,’ Dennis tells him, warming to his theme. He starts listing off attributes on his fingers. ‘You could have said it was firm, and nicely shaped, and pert –’

‘It’s all those things,’ Mac says, a glint in his eye. ‘I think about eating it all the time, too. You want to hear about that?’

It knocks the air clean out of Dennis’s lungs.

‘Jesus.’ His eyes drop to the hard line of Mac’s cock, showing through his pants. Mac’s turned on just talking about this, really turned on – he looks like he is, like he’d be ready to go if Dennis gave him the go ahead right now, like he’d love every second. There’s a sheen of sweat on his skin and his hair is flopping over his forehead, softened with heat. He looks so good and so needy that Dennis has to fight not to grab hold of that beautiful hair and shove him to his knees right there.

‘Yeah,’ Dennis says. It’s – a lot, it feels like a lot, but Dennis wants to hear it, he does. He wants to hear Mac talk about it more than he wants him to stop, even if it’s a little scary. He can’t find a trace of _no_ in his whole body. ‘Yeah, I do.’

Mac swallows, his throat clicking. He licks his lips.

‘I think about pinning you down,’ he says, his voice strained. ‘I think you’d – squirm around, make me hold you still.’ His throat works. ‘I wanna be inside you so bad, Den –’

Dennis moves without thinking about it, hands shoving at Mac’s chest until Mac starts backing up, his breathing going uneven, eyes wide as they stumble backwards into Dennis’s bedroom.

‘I think about – the way you’d move,’ he gets out, breathless. ‘Think about shoving my tongue inside you – the noises you’d make – Dennis –’

The tone of his voice is unbearable, almost pleading – Dennis shoves him backwards until Mac’s knees hit the back of Dennis’s bed. Mac goes down with a surprised whoosh of air and Dennis doesn’t give him a second before he’s grabbing hold of Mac’s shoulders and making him hold still. He’s never climbed into anyone’s lap before and it feels clumsy, almost ridiculous, when he’s a grown man – but he wants to be on top of Mac so badly that he just doesn’t care; he’s prepared to bend the laws of physics and denim to make it happen.

He hears the stitches of his jeans creaking as he arranges himself but it doesn’t matter because Mac says his name again, in the same helpless way he said it before, the way that makes Dennis feel beautiful. Mac grabs him by the back of his shirt and yanks him down into a filthy kiss, taking over. He manhandes Dennis around until Dennis is slumped half in Mac’s lap, legs framing Mac’s thigh, Mac’s palm hot in the small of his back. Mac shoves his tongue so deep into Dennis’s mouth that Dennis can’t help grinding against Mac’s thigh, moaning. The noise makes Mac’s hands jerk.

Dennis paws at Mac’s shoulders, tense and hungry. His cock is so hard that every little thrust against Mac’s thigh sets off sparks of pleasure. ‘Shirt off.’

Mac ignores him, tugging the hem of Dennis’s own shirt up so he can shove his hand further up Dennis’s back. Dennis shivers, arching into it. The way Mac watches him is going to stay with him for the rest of his life.

‘I’m gonna touch you, can I touch you?’ Mac asks in a rush. He breaks eye contact for a second to fumble with Dennis’s fly, his hands shaky with need. ‘Is that –’

‘Yeah, yes,’ Dennis gets out. ‘Just do it, just –’

Mac doesn’t wait; he spits on his hand and shoves it inside Dennis’s pants, touching his cock. Dennis wants to find that disgusting but he can’t – he sucks in a hissing breath at the cold shock of saliva on the sensitive skin, the wetness of it slicking the join between Mac’s thumb and forefinger. That’s Mac’s hand, touching his cock. Mac’s fingers.

The angle is terrible. Mac can’t move his hand much at all at first, trapped by Dennis’s jeans, but then he manoeuvres his wrist into a better position and wraps his whole hand around the shaft. He starts jerking it brisk and firm, so practiced that it makes Dennis’s stomach flip. He almost chokes, head dropping as he squeezes his eyes shut.

‘You okay?’ Mac asks.

‘What the fuck do you think? Oh God,’ Dennis breathes. He thrusts hard into Mac’s grip, groaning at the slickness, the tightness, the heat. It’s been so long since anybody touched him like this – anyone at all, never mind Mac – that it’s hard not to just ruthlessly chase orgasm.

‘Okay, okay,’ Mac mutters, trying to work Dennis’s jeans further down his hips with his spare hand. ‘God, you’re wet. I want to taste it.’

‘Jesus Christ.’ Dennis inhales hard, gripping Mac’s shoulders in what must be a painful grip. He was supposed to be the one blowing Mac’s mind – he’s supposed to be laying Mac down and going to town on his cock, making him forget about anyone else he’s ever fucked. If Mac stopped touching him for a second – if he’d just back off and stop making those noises into Dennis’s neck, his hand slick and firm and giving Dennis a really good channel to fuck into – if he’d just stop making this so good – then Dennis might be able to –

‘You know,’ he pants, ‘when I’m jerking off and I’m close, it’s always thinking about you looking at me that gets me off.’

Mac’s hand stops moving. He pulls back, eyes darting all over Dennis’s face. It’s the sort of thing someone might say just to be sexy in the heat of the moment, Dennis knows that. But it’s true, it really is, and he wants Mac to know it. The idea that he might think Dennis is making this up is intolerable.

‘I mean it,’ he insists, frowning a little and rolling his hips. Mac curses and starts moving his hand again, this time more focused. He’s watching for every word that comes out of Dennis’s mouth, eyes intent. ‘Fuck.’ Dennis’s teeth click together. ‘Fuck. I think about it, how badly you’d want me to come, how you’d be watching me, and I can’t help it, every time –’

‘Fuck, Dennis,’ Mac breathes, yanking Dennis more firmly onto his lap. He buries his face under Dennis’s jaw, using his teeth.

Dennis goes wild with it for a hot second, thrusting his cock into Mac’s tight grip in a hard, fast rhythm until he wrenches himself away with a huge force of will, stops his hips moving.

‘What, what?’ Mac mutters, brushing kisses across Dennis’s neck. ‘Don’t stop, don’t –’

He’s manhandling Dennis around again, trying to get him to move, and Dennis has to bite his lip, squeeze his eyes closed. Mac can throw him around like he weighs less than a bag of flour; he isn’t even straining under the weight.

‘I don’t want to come yet,’ he grits, out of breath. ‘I want to suck you off first.’

Mac presses his face into Dennis’s chest and groans, the sound muffled. Dennis runs his hands down Mac’s back until Mac arches, shuddering, and then he mutters, ‘sorry, sorry,’ and pulls them off, hovering, not sure where to touch. He realises he’s smiling, a little too wide to be sexy, so he tries to stop.

‘C’mere,’ Mac mutters, pulling back and kissing him deep, framing Dennis’s face with both hands. His words come out in a heady rush. ‘You want to blow me? Jesus. We can do that, we’ll do that.’ He pauses, like there’s something he wants to ask. Dennis pokes him. ‘Ow, God. You’ve thought about it? Do you – that’s something you think about?’

‘I was thinking about it yesterday,’ Dennis says immediately. ‘When you were propped against the doorframe in the bar, at the entrance, and you were bored cause there was no one’s ID needed checking, and you let yourself kind of – slouch, and I thought what if –‘ He licks his lips. ‘What if I got on my knees and sucked your cock, right there? What if you put your hands in my hair and held me there and fucked my face, what if you let me –’

‘I’d let you,’ Mac pants, burying his face in Dennis’s neck. He grabs one of Dennis’s hands and puts it on his cock, hard and hot through his pants. Dennis draws in a choked breath and rubs it hard, feeling out the shape. ‘Oh my God, _please_ –’

‘God, fuck me,’ Dennis breathes, and then freezes. ‘I mean.’ His voice stutters as he draws back to look at Mac, wide-eyed. ‘Not right now, I don’t – I’m not –’

‘Okay,’ Mac says, pupils completely blown. ‘No, that’s okay, you just – say whatever you want, I don’t –’

‘I mean like in the future,’ Dennis rambles, speaking over him. ‘In the future we can – you can – do that, maybe, in the future.’

‘Definitely,’ Mac says, nodding so rapidly that Dennis’s embarrassment abruptly collapses into laughter, hiccupping spurts of it. ‘Hey, come on, why are you –’

‘Because it’s funny,’ Dennis gets out, kissing him again, taking Mac’s face in both hands so he won’t say anything else, anything stupid that he can’t take back.

‘Okay,’ Mac mumbles. ‘Maybe it’s a _little_ funny –’

‘Just shut up and let me suck your dick,’ Dennis says, still smiling, and when Mac brings a hand up to his cheek, Dennis hides his face in his palm.

‘Okay,’ Dennis says after a minute, breathing out slowly. ‘Lie back. I haven’t –’ He sets his jaw. Admitting this is going to suck. ‘I haven’t done this before so it might – it might be –’

‘You literally aren’t even going to have to do anything,’ Mac tells him earnestly. ‘You could probably just breathe on me and I’d bust, honest to God.’

‘Should you be admitting that to me right now?’ Dennis asks, quirking a smile as he’s undoing Mac’s belt. He refocuses, pulling down Mac’s zipper – Jesus, his cock is hard – getting him to hump up so he can pull his pants down over his hips and knees and oh, Jesus, Jesus Christ, that’s Mac’s dick. Dennis is looking right at it. In a minute he’s going to put it in his mouth.

Fuck.

‘Dennis,’ Mac says. His cheeks are flushed, his hips twitching against the bed – so hot for it he can’t keep still. But determined, nevertheless. ‘Dennis. Look at me. Come on. You don’t have to, it’s fine –’

‘Oh my God, shut up,’ Dennis snaps. He sounds more stressed than he actually is.

Or maybe not. He’s a little stressed. Mac’s cock looks – really good. It looks like a cock, hard and thick and a dusky red colour, shading darker than Dennis’s. Dennis has seen it before, obviously, but only ever out the corner of his eye, when he wasn’t supposed to be looking. This is different. Mac’s never been hard like this before for _him_ – knowing that Dennis is going to touch him, suck him, have Mac in his mouth. 

The tip is pretty wet; it leaves a streak on Mac’s underwear when Dennis pulls them off too. This is really gay. This is the gayest thing Dennis has ever done, this is – Dennis wants to touch. He wants to wrap his hand around it and give Mac a couple of strokes to get used to it first but he’s not sure, if Mac says he’s just going to go off instantly – is it better if Dennis just kind of goes for it? Just bends down and starts sucking?

‘You’re bigger than I thought you were gonna be,’ he says at random, to fill the silence while he thinks. Another one of those heat of the moment sex talk things that sounds fake but isn’t.

‘Uh. Thanks?’ Mac says. He sounds kind of winded.

Dennis looks up and Mac is just staring at him. He’s just watching Dennis look at his cock, his cheeks all flushed and his lips bitten and red and his hair all mussed. God.

Dennis puts a hand on Mac’s dick. He doesn’t even think about it, just reaches out and clasps it firmly around the base. Soft, hot skin under his fingers. It feels good.

Mac makes a tiny noise. Dennis looks up again, but he’s closed his eyes. He’s biting his lip, one hand clasping Dennis’s shoulder, arm stretched and muscles straining just this side of too hard. He’s still wearing his stupid fucking RIOT t-shirt, pits dark with sweat. With his face turned up towards the light like that, he reminds Dennis of one of those statues chiselled by old gays in ancient Greece or wherever – the ones that are clearly all about banging even though they act like they’re about fighting or dying. That pained beauty. Mac looks just like that.

Dennis readjusts his grip slightly. Mac’s hand tightens on his shoulder. He groans.

‘I’m not even doing anything!’ Dennis protests. ‘I’m literally doing the bare minimum. I don’t think this even qualifies as sex.’

‘It qualifies,’ Mac grits out. ‘Told you I was close, bro.’

‘Don’t call me bro while we’re fucking,’ Dennis says automatically. ‘Okay, fine – what if I do –’

He leans down, scooting backwards a little until he’s at eye level with Mac’s cock. He’s careful not to breathe on it, mindful of Mac’s warning. Instead he just kind of – engulfs it with his mouth, not giving himself enough time to freak out about it. Should they have used a condom? Fuck. No, nobody does that with blow jobs, and anyway, he wants Mac to feel it. He wants Mac to feel how slick Dennis’s mouth is, watering at the thought of what he’s doing. He wants Mac to love it.

‘Oh, Jesus,’ Mac moans. His fingers tighten so hard on Dennis’s shoulder than it hurts.

Dennis lets Mac’s cock sit in his mouth for a second, keeping his hold firm around the base of it and not letting Mac thrust like he can _feel_ Mac wants to. He rakes his other hand up under Mac’s shirt to touch his hot skin and feels the way his chest is heaving with his breaths, abs tensing as he tries not to come. God. All that power leashed in his tight body and he’s helpless to Dennis right now, shaking. He’s making so much noise; so worked up over so little. Dennis squirms, wishing he had a third hand so he could jerk off.

He breathes in through his nose and sucks cautiously at the head of Mac’s cock, processing the way it tastes. It smells kind of musky, a lot like sweat, and if Dennis sticks his tongue out down the underside then he can feel the thick vein there, the one that really stands out.

Mac’s hips buck underneath him. Dennis makes an outraged sound, his mouth closing more tightly around Mac’s cock reflexively. He doesn’t choke but it’s a close thing.

‘Sorry. Just – that’s so good,’ Mac tells him, sounding stunned. Dennis frowns. Has he never gotten a blowjob before? Or not a good one, at least? Maybe this is going to be easier than Dennis thought. ‘Do that again, the thing with your tongue. Please.’

Dennis does it again, moaning as he sucks because he remembers that always used to feel good when girls did it to him, the vibrations around his dick. And although it starts out artificial it quickly becomes real as Mac starts slowly moving against his face, holding Dennis in place with his hand on Dennis’s shoulder as he thrusts shallowly. Dennis tries to relax his jaw, letting Mac slide in and out. The noise he’s making starts sounding more like a whine, vibrating around Mac’s cock. God, this is gay. This is super fucking gay. He really likes having Mac’s cock in his mouth. Fuck.

‘Dennis, I’m going to come,’ Mac blurts out in a rush. ‘I’m going to come, oh God –’

And he does. Dennis deliberately pulls back slowly enough that Mac’s cock is half in and half out of his mouth when it happens. He uses his hand to work Mac through it, jerking his cock while he comes in hot spurts over Dennis’s mouth and his chin. He breathes out harshly at the shock of it, the heat. Some gets on his chest, spattering his shirt.

Dennis stares down at it, mind a little blank. That’s going to stain. He’ll never be able to wear this shirt again, but he knows he’s going to keep it anyway – folded up small, stuffed down at the back of a dresser drawer. Mac’s come bleaching the dye out of the fabric.

He wipes as much off his face as he can and keeps stroking Mac’s cock gently as he softens. It’s familiar and easy, the feeling of come in his hand, but this time it’s different. It’s different because it’s Mac, and that’s –

‘You let me come on your face,’ Mac tells him, as if Dennis might not have noticed this. He’s still breathing hard, his words coming out laboured. If Dennis could, he’d take the look on Mac’s face and shove that down at the back of his dresser drawer too, along with the shirt. ‘That was the hottest thing that’s ever happened to me.’

‘I wanted you to come on my face,’ Dennis says honestly. Then he gets an idea. ‘Wait, can you – take my pants off?’

He nods down at himself, jeans half done and cock hard and straining against his stomach.

Mac gamely levers himself up. He yanks Dennis’s jeans and underwear out of the way so that Dennis can get a hand on himself. He starts jerking briskly with a sigh of relief, using the hand that still has Mac’s come on it. He groans, biting his lip at the slickness. God, he was already far along before he went down on Mac and now he’s touching himself it’s not going to take a lot, he’s –

‘Dennis,’ Mac breathes, right in his ear. ‘God, you’re so beautiful, you’re –’ and then Mac is – kneeling next to him on the bed, hot puff of air hitting Dennis’s neck as Mac nuzzles at him. His body heat hits Dennis like a wall, the smell of his sweat. He’s breathing so hard as he looks down at Dennis touching himself.

Dennis rears up when Mac touches his cock, mouth open soundlessly as his hips jerk. Mac’s lips go slack and disbelieving against Dennis’s neck as he slides his hand all over Dennis’s cock. He’s not even helping – Dennis is doing all the work of actually jerking it, Mac just seems to want to touch it. He lets his fingers play in between Dennis’s, breathing out a curse when he makes Dennis jump.

‘I love your cock,’ Mac tells him intently, his voice hot and dark in Dennis’s ear. Dennis’s cock jerks and he squeezes his eyes shut as his hand moves faster, pleasure building in the tingling skin of his thighs. ‘I love your cock, and your ass, and your mouth, and I’m gonna fuck you, Dennis, I want to – I want your cock in my mouth, I want to suck it, I want everything –’

Dennis comes, his back bowing up in a hard arch as his cock spurts, orgasm hitting him so sharply it’s almost painful. He hears the noises he makes as if from far away. Mac strokes his back, kisses his neck; he holds Dennis up as he slumps against Mac’s shoulder, panting.

Mac kisses his forehead a couple times, clumsily using the edge of his t-shirt to wipe Dennis’s face clean. Dennis lets him do it, feeling like he’s floating somewhere a few feet above his own body. Mac’s hands are so warm.

It’s been a really, really long time since Dennis came that hard.

‘Jesus,’ he says eventually. ‘What the fuck.’

‘I know, right?’ Mac says, sounding pleased. He yawns, squeezing Dennis a little. ‘Do you wanna sleep?’

‘It’s like two PM,’ Dennis mumbles, burying his face in Mac’s shoulder. It feels good. He doesn’t want to move, not even to climb into bed.

‘Yeah, but.’ Mac kisses the side of his face gently. ‘Nap. You’re like, basically asleep already. Do you always pass out after you come?’

‘No.’ Dennis frowns. ‘Sometimes. But it’s too bright outside.’

He yawns, loud and long. He can’t remember the last time he slept more than a couple of hours at once. Maybe if Mac’s here it’ll be easier, even though it’s nowhere near dark.

‘You want me to pull the curtains closed?’

‘No.’ Dennis fastens his hand around Mac’s forearm to make sure he stays put. His eyes are shut now. ‘Don’t go anywhere.’

‘Okay,’ Mac says quietly, after a second. He squeezes Dennis’s shoulder again. ‘I won’t.’

‘Promise?’

Mac makes a small noise that might be a laugh. ‘I promise, dude.’

‘Be here when I wake up,’ Dennis whispers. It’s half an instruction and half a question, but he’s already drifting off before he hears Mac’s reply. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy friday!!!! this chapter's a long one, folks. hope you enjoy <3

‘Dennis?’ Mac’s voice, close. ‘Dennis? Wake up, dude. Takeout’s here.’

‘Takeout?’ Dennis mumbles, struggling to open his eyes. God, what time is it? It’s dark in his room, even with the curtains open. He’s half-sitting, propped up against the headboard – not lying down like he should be. He can feel the ghost of warmth against his back, like somebody slipped out sideways from behind him.

Mac’s sat on the edge of the bed, watching him. He starts to get up. Dennis makes an irritated noise, groping around and catching hold of his arm. ‘Wait.’

There’s a pause, and then Mac sits back down. Now that Dennis is looking at him with fully open eyes, he can tell that Mac is nervous, even apprehensive, and he can’t figure out why. But then it all clicks back into place, a rush of sound and colour, and Dennis remembers with a sharp intake of breath. Mac’s face in the diner when Dennis had put his hand on Mac’s leg. The shock. The drive home.

All of it.

Dennis feels his own eyes widen. He looks at his hand on Mac’s forearm. It feels huge and awkward, suddenly; the hair prickles along Dennis’s arm. No fucking wonder Mac looks nervous.

‘What?’ Mac asks, a little tightly. ‘You want something?’

Dennis hesitates. ‘No.’

He can’t seem to let go of Mac’s arm.

‘You’ve been asleep a while,’ Mac says, when it becomes clear Dennis isn’t going to say anything else. He wishes Mac would stop staring at him; he doesn’t appreciate being examined like he’s a grenade that might go off any second. Even if he feels a bit like one.

‘How long?’

‘Like, four hours?’ Mac wrinkles his nose. ‘Cause we got back at like, two, and then, uh –’ Mac swallows, flushing bright red. ‘And then it was maybe another hour before –’

‘Yeah, thanks, I don’t need the rundown,’ Dennis snaps.

Mac flinches – actually flinches, as if Dennis has struck him. Dennis tightens his grip on Mac’s arm. His heart is starting to race and it almost hurts how fast, when the rest of him isn’t even really awake yet.

‘Sorry,’ he says. Mac blinks at him in surprise. Dennis hears it echoing back, _sorry_. How many times has he said that to Mac over the years they’ve known each other? Probably fewer than he could count on the fingers of one hand. ‘Sorry, I’m just – fuck. Let me try something, okay?’

Mac eyes him but nods anyway. Dennis licks his lips and then sits up. His shirt is clammy and cool with old sweat, stuck to his back. A memory flashes through his brain: Mac coming on his lips, his chin. The way he’d looked at Dennis after, like he was something both sacred and profane. Dennis feels his face surge with heat.

He pulls Mac closer by slow inches, until he sees it dawn on Mac’s face what he’s about to do.

Mac closes his eyes when their lips touch, but Dennis keeps his open. He wants to remember what it feels like, wants to feel the sparking of every nerve, and he can’t do that if he’s closing his eyes and getting too into it. He needs to concentrate.

Mac makes a sound as they kiss, mouths moving softly against each other; something between contentment and surprise, some small humming thing. Dennis loosens his grip on Mac’s arm, stroking it instead, and Mac seems to like that too. He hums again, pressing forward eagerly. Dennis tries to relax his mouth and let the kiss flow instead of staying rigid. Mac’s doing a much better job of acting naturally than Dennis is, but then he’s probably not paying as much attention to all the important details. Mac’s mouth is so soft – Dennis was sure he’d made that up but no, he hadn’t. Soft and warm, lips a little chapped. He tastes like coffee with too much sweetener. Dennis’s other hand comes up to hold his cheek and brush the speckle of his five o’clock shadow with his thumb, rough in one direction and silky in another. He breaks away from Mac’s mouth to chase that prickling sensation with his lips, all the way to the line of Mac’s jaw, and that’s when he realises he’s closed his eyes after all and Mac is breathing in a soft pant, the skin of his throat shivering and strained under Dennis’s lips.

Dennis pulls away slowly, his eyes wide.

‘Uh,’ Mac croaks. ‘You good?’

‘Fine,’ Dennis says automatically.

Mac’s eyes drop to his mouth and Dennis wonders if he’s gone red, rubbed up by Mac’s stubble. He brings his hand to his lips and touches them gently, feeling for tenderness.

Mac makes another sound. It’s not soft and content this time. Dennis’s eyes snap to him and they sit there for a long moment, just staring at each other. Dennis holds himself very still.

‘I’m fine,’ he says again. His voice is low and hoarse. He drops his hand, clearing his throat. ‘You said – there’s food?’

‘Food,’ Mac says, as if only vaguely familiar with the concept. He blinks, shaking his head a little. ‘Yeah, I – uh. I ordered food, and we should eat it.’

‘Okay,’ Dennis says, and then wants to kick himself. The conversation they’re having is barely grade school level but it’s still taking all his concentration to maintain it. Mac’s eyes keep drifting down to his mouth, his neck. Fucking vampire. Or is he staring at the stains on Dennis’s t shirt? Jesus Christ. They need to get out of this room. ‘Then let’s go and eat it.’

He starts to get off the bed and then pauses, raising his eyebrows meaningfully at Mac, still sitting next to him.

‘Oh, right.’ Mac scrambles up with an impressive lack of grace and then just stands there for a moment, winding his fingers together. Dennis stares up at him, reciting states in his head in alphabetical order so that he won’t drop his gaze to Mac’s crotch. ‘I’ll, uh, go and set that up.’

‘You do that,’ Dennis agrees.

When Mac’s gone he just sits on the edge of the bed for a while, staring at the wall. It’s fine. Everything is fine. Clearly it works, whatever happened earlier; it’s real. It wasn’t just a fluke, or it would’ve sucked when he kissed Mac just now. And it didn’t suck.

Dennis leans forward with his elbows on his knees, massaging his temples. Is it fine? It’s probably not fine. He doesn’t really feel fine, but he’s having trouble identifying whatever else it is he’s feeling instead. He feels lit from the inside by something; it’s close to a high, but without any of the debilitating side effects. It doesn’t make any sense. He has a nagging desire to go through to the kitchen and eat takeout with Mac, even though everything is weird and surreal and he can’t stop his hands shaking. He wants to look up mid-bite and find Mac staring at him, watch his cheeks flush at getting caught. He wants to sit there and make snarky conversation, needle Mac until he gets riled up; he wants to press buttons until something happens.

Something like what happened earlier.

He pulls on a different t-shirt, underwear, some sweatpants. He should probably shower but some irrational impulse is telling him that if he takes too long then Mac will get tired of waiting and leave. It’s not like it hasn’t happened before.

A small beat of relief goes through him when he steps out of the bedroom and finds Mac sat at the table with the takeout bag and a stack of paper plates scavenged from somewhere, two beers already open, condensation rolling down the glass.

Mac looks up from his phone, watching Dennis as he walks over. Dennis had thought that Mac spent a lot of time watching him before, but he’s going to have to re-evaluate that idea if this continues. He’s never felt so looked at.

‘What?’ he asks, sitting down and grabbing the nearest carton of something. He starts dumping it on his plate without paying much attention to what it is. Mac knows what he likes; he won’t have ordered anything with mushrooms. ‘Do I have something on my face?’

Mac seems to struggle for a second before he looks down at his own plate. ‘No,’ he says. ‘Nope.’

He shuffles his chopsticks from hand to hand, attention temporarily diverted. Mac always insists he can use chopsticks until about halfway through the meal, at which point he usually gets fed up and uses his hands. Maybe twice a week, Dennis has seen him do that. Twice a week for the last thirteen years.

Before Mac moved out.

‘Shouldn’t you be at work?’ Dennis asks, to distract himself from the bizarre lump developing in his throat. He takes a bite of what appears to be lemon chicken. ‘It’s past seven.’

‘Yeah,’ Mac mumbles, still frowning at his chopsticks. He hesitates, looking up at Dennis. ‘I didn’t want to go while you were, y’know. Asleep.’

Dennis swallows an uncomfortably large mouthful of chicken and rice.

‘Uh huh,’ he says. He takes a long swig of his beer. Does that mean Mac is going to go as soon as they’re done here? What would _done here_ even entail? He could leave after the food is finished, or he could – stick around, after, until –

‘Plus it’s not like they really need me, anyway,’ Mac continues, concentrating hard on collecting a mouthful on his chopsticks. Dennis estimates he’s two more attempts away from throwing in the towel. ‘Wednesday night’s not exactly a huge money-maker.’

Dennis snorts. ‘When _is_ a huge money-maker?’

Mac smiles, eyes darting to Dennis and then away again. Dennis forces down another bite, chugging his beer to the halfway mark.

‘So I figure I can skip out,’ Mac says, gaze determinedly focused on his plate. ‘If, y’know. You wanted me to hang out here, or whatever.’

Dennis pauses with his fork halfway to his mouth.

‘Hang out,’ he repeats. He realises he’s on the verge of slightly manic laughter, although he couldn’t explain why if someone offered him a million bucks.

‘Yeah,’ Mac says, looking at him quickly. He frowns down at his plate. ‘Not that I brought an extra shirt or anything. You know, to sleep in. Not that I have to sleep over,’ he trips over himself to specify, his cheeks burning. ‘I don’t have to – do any of that. Whatever. It’s fine.’

He makes a frustrated sound in the back of his throat and drops the chopsticks, sitting back in his chair. It groans under his weight.

Dennis focuses on chewing the food in his mouth, swallowing, collecting more. He takes a sip of his beer. Mac’ll have to borrow Dennis’s toothbrush, if he sleeps over. That’s so gross. But worth it, maybe, if he can get Mac to stay.

Mac left a shirt here when he moved out, which he clearly isn’t aware of. Dennis had found it a few weeks after he left, mixed in with a pile of his own dirty laundry. All that planning and Mac hadn’t bothered to check for anything that might have fallen through the cracks. What else had he missed? Dennis had expected to find more shirts in among the pile, pulsating like landmines, but there was nothing. Just that one shirt. It’s the stupid BEER one; the bear with antlers. Mac would probably like it back.

‘It’s fine,’ he says, his mouth dry. Mac looks up at him quickly, eyes uncertain. ‘You can borrow one of mine.’

\---

The next day, Dennis drives to work in the middle of rush hour in serene silence. He doesn’t roll down the window to yell once; he doesn’t even honk his horn. Three separate people cut him off in the space of fifteen minutes and he experiences only a minor prickle of irritation. His head feels as if it’s drifting pleasantly about a foot above his body; he spots himself smiling idiotically in the rearview mirror a couple of times, but he can’t make himself stop. He doesn’t really want to.

It’s just a good day, that’s all.

Mac had left early to go home and change, around seven AM. He’d woken Dennis up already dressed, leaning over him in bed and kissing him while Dennis was too slow and sleepy to understand what was going on. Once he’d realised, Dennis had wound his fingers into the hair at the back of Mac’s neck, made irritated noises into his mouth. He’d forgotten what it was like to have Mac’s warm bulk in bed with him, that comforting weight on the other side of the mattress. 

‘Jesus, your breath stinks,’ Mac had told him, and then climbed back into bed. He hadn’t left for another forty-five minutes.

Dennis contemplates trying to dial it back a little as he pulls up outside the bar. But he isn’t even sure how he’d do that, not in the state he’s in – not feeling _alive_ like this, as if someone shook up his insides like a bottle of coke and then poured them back into his body. He keeps thinking about Mac’s hands. The knuckles stand out so hard against the skin when he’s clenching his fists, they look like they might pop right out. Dennis wants to suck them into his mouth.

When he gets inside the bar, he’s confronted with a sea of glitter, brightly coloured construction paper, and a nagging feeling that he’s forgotten something.

‘About time you showed up,’ Dee remarks, barely looking up from rummaging through a cardboard box, frowning into its depths. ‘I told you I needed all hands on deck for the opening, especially as you’re not even going to be there.’

‘Change of plan, actually.’ Dennis watches Frank go shuffling past into the back room, a furtive look on his face. He’s wearing what appears to be a self-fashioned paper hat with crayon drawings of himself and Charlie on the sides. Dennis wonders if he should follow before Dee ropes him into more of her nonsense but then again, he rarely has a chance to interact with her when he’s in such a good mood. Maybe he should make the most of it. ‘We’re coming after all.’

Dee’s eyes flicker over to him and then back to the box.

‘Uh huh,’ she says flatly. ‘Managed to move some things around after all, did you? You and Mac?’

‘Something like that,’ Dennis says, feeling something happen to his face and hoping Dee doesn’t notice. ‘Anyway, what’s – De Boys-Reynolds Acting Shool?’ He reads, getting closer and squinting at the banner stretched across the pool table. Charlie glares at him, a smear of red glitter swiped over his left eyebrow. ‘Shouldn’t that be ‘Dubois’? And ‘school’? Missed a spot, Charlie.’

‘Damn it, Charlie,’ Dee exclaims, abandoning her cardboard box fort to loom over Charlie’s shoulder. She’s got so much height on him, it’s genuinely a little intimidating. ‘You had _one_ job.’

‘Why did you give the spelling job to the one illiterate member of the gang?’ Dennis asks. ‘That’s more your fault as supervisor, Dee.’

‘He’s the only one who volunteered,’ Dee snaps. ‘Plus, he’s the most creative.’

Charlie looks up, startled.

‘Even if he can’t fucking spell,’ she mutters. Charlie rolls his eyes and goes back to the banner. ‘Now, stop complaining and help me.’

She motions Dennis over to the other end of the banner, where she’s attempting some sort of hideous portrait of her and Artemis with their arms around each other. Artemis’s left arm is the same size as Dee’s head.

‘Okay,’ Dennis asks, rolling up his sleeves. ‘What do you want me to do?’

Dee pauses.

‘Okay?’ She studies his face carefully. ‘No arguments?’

‘You want me to argue?’ Dennis raises an eyebrow. ‘Because I can argue, if that’s what you –’

‘No, no.’ Dee gives him a onceover, like she’s trying to spot any obvious physical changes that might explain his mood. Dennis tries to keep his face blank. ‘Just – it’s kind of weird for you to just go along with what I’m asking you to do.’

‘It’s not weird,’ Dennis lies. He clears his throat, raising his voice and squinting over at Charlie’s craft corner. ‘Hey, I don’t think that’s how you spell that, Charlie.’

‘I’m not an idiot,’ Dee tells him, unmoved. ‘You can’t even see what he’s writing from here. Don’t try to distract me.’

‘Look, do you want my help or not?’ Dennis asks flatly. ‘Because we’re wasting time here.’

‘Okay, fine.’ Dee holds her hands up. ‘I won’t ask any more questions. Just – help me with this, okay?’

They spend the next few hours working on the banner and sorting through the bunch of discount crap Dee ordered from the internet to decorate the new studio space. Dennis doesn’t see the connection between pink plastic flamingos and the faux-Gothic full-length mirror that takes both of them to unwrap, or what either of them have to do with acting classes. Maybe she’s going to use them as props or something. Props for an extremely tacky production of Dracula, which for some reason is set in Hawaii? Who knows. He also doesn’t understand why she’s doing this all here instead of at the studio itself, necessitating that someone ferry it all over before next Friday, but he doesn’t care enough to complain. Mac’s going to fucking hate this, when he gets here. He’s going to whine his ass off throughout the entire process. Dennis can’t wait.

‘What the hell’s gotten into you?’ Frank asks when he emerges from the back room to go in search of lunch, squinting at Dennis. ‘You take something? If you’re holding, you better give. You’re smiling like a freak.’

Dennis opens his mouth and closes it again, a prickle of unease travelling down his spine. Maybe he really should be trying to harder to keep this hidden, if even Frank is picking up on his good mood.

‘Nothing.’ He manages a weak laugh. ‘Just high on life, Frank.’

Frank rolls his eyes and stomps off in search of hoagies.

Mac appears about half an hour later, right when Dennis is starting to wonder what’s taking him so long. It’s not like his apartment is all the way across town from Dennis’s, or even like he had a lot to do once he got there. Maybe he got waylaid by Rex – a nasty thought Dennis rejects as soon as it occurs to him, although it leaves a knot behind in his stomach – or it could be something even worse. Maybe Mac’s thought better of it all and doesn’t want to see Dennis anymore. Maybe now he’s finally got what he wanted, the shine’s rubbed off. Dennis picks through the memory of yesterday, the way Mac had looked and sounded. He sure hadn’t seemed like he was getting bored.

Dennis is working himself up into a nice panic attack about it when Mac slips through the door. He looks around and catches Dennis’s eye. His face brightens in a different way than Dennis is used to – not tentative anymore with the fear of rejection, but happy and light. It feels dangerous, potent. What has Dennis done, for Mac to give him that? Barely anything at all. He let Mac stay in the apartment – _their_ apartment. He let Mac touch him. He let Mac sleep.

The clenched fist in Dennis’s stomach starts to relax.

‘Hey,’ Mac says, coming over to the bar. He drums his fingertips along it nervously.

Dennis realises he’s poised with his hands hovering in mid-air over the gift bags he’s meant to be assembling, clutching a pair of novelty sunglasses shaped like pineapples and palm trees. He puts them down, trying his best to dust the glitter off his hands. 

‘Hi,’ he says. He can’t think of anything else to say. He shoots a quick glance at Mac, who seems equally stumped. What did they used to talk about before any of this happened? They’ve spent a significant amount of time in the last few months pretending not to talk at all; maybe they should go back to that, before somebody bursts a blood vessel.

‘Is all this for Dee’s party?’ Mac asks, gesturing all the piles of junk.

‘Yes,’ Dennis says. Mac’s eyes drop to his mouth and stay there. Dennis folds his arms across his chest. He can feel his face getting hot. 

‘Great,’ Mac says. ‘That’s – um.’ Dennis raises an eyebrow. Mac clears his throat, lowering his voice. Dennis leans forward against his will, stomach fluttering with nerves. ‘So I was thinking tonight maybe we could –’

‘Good, you’re here,’ Dee pops up out of nowhere, separating the two of them with a fresh batch of construction paper. They spring apart with all the subtlety of a Monty Python sketch, but she doesn’t seem to notice. She eyes Mac. ‘You can get started on the balloons.’

‘But,’ Mac says, his gaze straying to Dennis and then back to Dee. ‘I don’t want to.’

‘It’s the least you can do when you’re not even going to come,’ Dee reminds him, an edge in her voice.

‘I am, though,’ Mac frowns. ‘I mean, we are. Me and Dennis. We decided.’

Dee stops. ‘You are?’ she asks, suspicious.

‘I told you we were,’ Dennis interjects. ‘I said, when I came in.’

‘Yeah, but.’ Dee rolls her eyes. ‘You weren’t _serious_.’

Dennis throws up his hands. ‘I try and do something nice for once and look where it gets me.’

‘Don’t have a heart attack, I just meant – why?’ Dee asks. She shifts on her feet, clearly uncomfortable. She looks like a kid again when her eyes go that wide; it makes Dennis want to push her down the stairs. ‘I thought you both had – you know, a thing. A thing you couldn’t miss.’

‘Turns out we didn’t,’ Dennis shrugs, smiling innocently.

‘Okay.’ Dee’s jaw is set. She still doesn’t quite believe them, Dennis can tell. The look on her face when they actually do turn up is going to be priceless. ‘Fine. Then – you have to bring the banner. And help me get stuff over there.’ She pauses. ‘And you have to do it in the Range Rover. It’s bigger than my car.’

She throws it down like a gauntlet, clearly expecting Dennis to start making excuses or flat-out refuse.

‘Fine,’ Dennis tells her, still smiling. Dee’s eye twitches. ‘Anything to help out my dear, sweet sis.’

\---

Dennis doesn’t get a chance to be alone with Mac until later in the afternoon, when Charlie and Dee start ferrying the first load of crap over to the studio with the promise that Dennis and Mac will help with the next batch. Frank sinks into a booth with a blissful sigh to light up while they’re gone but even then, Dennis drags Mac through to the back office before they do anything. He doesn’t want to risk getting caught when Dee realises she forgot her Alanis Morrissette CD or whatever.

Mac lets himself be dragged, although he raises an eyebrow when Dennis shoves him up against the closed door.

‘What’s that, Lassie?’ he asks sarcastically. ‘Timmy’s stuck down the well again?’

‘Shut up,’ Dennis says, and kisses him.

Mac’s mouth falls open immediately, like he’s been waiting for it all afternoon. He makes an eager noise into Dennis’s mouth, winding his fingers through Dennis’s hair to hold his head in place. Dennis presses him into the door, a childish spark of joy going through him at the way Mac shoves forward without any finesse, just trying to get closer. Dennis knows the feeling. It seems absurd, almost impossible, that they’re both here at exactly the same time, in the same place, feeling the same thing. It makes the lit-up feeling inside Dennis pulse even sharper, double-edged with the awareness that it can’t last. It won’t last. It never does.

So Dennis has grab it with both hands while he can.

When Dennis pulls back, they’re both breathing hard. Mac thumps his head back against the door, staring at him.

‘Fuck,’ he says thickly. ‘You’re good at that.’

Dennis grins.

‘When did you get good at that?’ Mac continues, frowning a little. ‘I’ve watched the tapes. I’ve seen how you kiss.’

Dennis drops his gaze, a prickle of sensation skating over the back of his neck. There’s a difference between what you do when you’re trying to make a show of something and what you do when you know nobody’s watching. He would have thought Mac would understand that.

‘Do you think they’ve noticed anything?’ Dennis asks, jerking his head at the door, where if they listened closely they’d probably be able to hear Frank snoring.

Mac shakes his head. ‘Dee’s too busy freaking out and Charlie’s getting all caught up in it. Did you see the look on his face while she was bossing him around? We gotta get out there and save him, man.’

‘We will,’ Dennis promises, leaning in again and kissing Mac featherlight, just to hear the way it makes his breath hitch. ‘Later.’

‘I guess this was a good time for it to happen,’ Mac says, his voice dropping low. His fingers stroke through the soft hair at the back of Dennis’s head, avoiding the strands hardened with product further up. ‘When they’re all distracted, I mean.’

There’s a look on his face like he thinks he’s being stealthy, eyes darting up to check Dennis’s reaction. It did occur to Dennis more than once during the course of the afternoon that they weren’t acting like two people who _weren’t_ having sex with each other, if anyone cared enough to pay attention. There was nothing you could definitively point to as evidence in itself; they’re just moving around each other a little differently, like two people trying slightly too hard to keep a field of distance between their bodies. It wouldn’t look like anything significant, to a casual observer. Dennis is making sure of that.

Although at one point, Mac had touched Dennis’s waist briefly when trying to get past behind him and Dennis had actually frozen to the spot for a second before he’d recovered. The skin felt hot where Mac had touched him; it felt raw.

‘Probably,’ Dennis says, after a pause. He swallows, his voice coming out stilted and brash with false confidence. ‘Not that I care what they think, anyway.’

Maybe if he says it enough times, he can make it true.

‘Right,’ Mac says, his features tightening briefly before they smooth out again. He forces a laugh. ‘None of them have ever had a successful relationship in their lives.’

Of course. Of course Mac wants to tell the rest of the gang, no later than the day after the event. He loves telling people things; he lines them up and makes unexpected forays into professional contemporary dance in order to tell people things. It’s a miracle he didn’t hire a skywriter in the couple of hours they were apart.

They don’t even know what this is yet, Dennis reminds himself, trying to tug down the balloon of unselfconscious elation threatening to lift him off the ground, away from all his realistic expectations. It’s all pheromones right now, pheromones and fluff. They don’t even know if there’s anything to tell.

‘You want to come over tonight?’ he asks Mac, pressing in again.

Mac’s eyes follow the movements of his mouth. ‘Yes,’ he says immediately. It’s so easy, Dennis thrills with it. He looks away, trying to swallow down a bolt of excited nausea. Mac’s going to come over tonight, and they’re going to have sex again. Mac is going to touch him, and Dennis is going to make a lot of noise and mess, maybe more than he’s comfortable with. But it’s okay, because he’ll be making it with Mac, and Mac has never been afraid of a little mess.

‘Good,’ Dennis says. ‘Bring your toothbrush this time.’

\---

It goes on like that for a week, until the night of Dee’s big party. Mac’s belongings slowly begin to infiltrate the apartment in a way that satisfies some deep-seated instinctual part of Dennis’s brain; his clothes litter Dennis’s bedroom floor, his douchey protein shakes stack up in the refrigerator. He doesn’t go home for four days in a row. It isn’t even all just sex; the night before the opening, they get drunk watching _Cake Wars_ and fall asleep on the couch.

Although the sex does have something to do with it. It’s clearly difficult for Mac to pry himself away from Dennis still tangled in sweaty sheets, a weakness that Dennis has no problem exploiting for his own personal gain. The more Mac stays over, the more the apartment will feel like home again, and the less likely that Dennis will ever have to actually ask him to move back in.

Now that they’re naked together a lot, Dennis is noticing the weight Mac mentioned putting on, the day they first hooked up. It’s not that dramatic a difference – a soft layer of fat wrapping around his arms, a slight loss of definition in his chest and stomach. His jaw isn’t as sharp, his angles softening. Dennis doesn’t mind it as much as he probably should. He sees this part of Mac that no one else sees; he’s the only one paying enough attention to notice the way Mac is changing, the slight flecks of silver in his hair and beard. The lines around his eyes and mouth that Dennis only notices now because he spends so much time in close proximity to Mac’s face.

‘You’re staring,’ Mac tells him, clearly trying not to smile and failing.

They’re off to the side of the buffet line on the night of the studio opening, standing strategically close to the bar. It’s due to open any time now, and not a second too soon. They’ve already had to bear several speeches with only the raspberry vodka in Dennis’s hipflask to go on, three of which had been delivered by a progressively more loutish Dee.

Mac’s wearing a real shirt again, this time a pale blue colour with navy pinstripes. It looks weird on him, and a bit too familiar – Dennis isn’t entirely sure if Mac actually owns it or just stole it from his closet. He’ll pay Mac back for it later, if that turns out to be the case.

‘People are gonna see, man,’ Mac insists, as if he gives a shit.

‘Okay, a) I’m not staring,’ Dennis tells him. ‘And b) it’s a free country, Mac. I can look where I like. Besides, they’re just going to think I’m judging the way you’re dressed, which I am.’

Mac frowns. ‘What’s wrong with the way I’m dressed?’

‘Don’t you think it’s time you owned more than one pair of pants?’ Dennis asks, tone of voice practically begging Mac to open his mind. ‘Navy doesn’t go with everything, you know.’

‘It goes with this,’ Mac argues, plucking at his shirt.

‘Fluke,’ Dennis says shortly. ‘Please. Buy more pants.’

Mac opens his mouth and then closes it again.

‘Okay,’ he says in a strange voice. ‘If you want me to, I will.’

Dennis feels his face contorting. ‘I didn’t mean in a – like in a –’ he physically can’t say the word boyfriend ‘– way, just. If you want to. You should.’

‘Yeah,’ Mac says, watching him now with that bright look. This is the problem with how they aren’t telling anybody. Because it hasn’t gone wrong yet, and Mac keeps looking at Dennis like that, and Dennis hates it almost as much as he loves it, feeling like Mac’s gaze is marking him up in a way that everyone must be able to see.

‘This has to be like, everyone we know, huh?’ Dennis says, turning away from Mac desperately. It’s true; everyone really turned out for Dee, startling though it was to see when they first came through the doors. Rex is on the other side of the room, a careful circle of negative space around him which Dennis’s attention refuses to penetrate. Gail the snail is here, ominously dressed in leather straps and bright bubblegum pink dungarees. Even Ingrid Nelson is here, eying Dee from across the room sceptically. 

Mac wrinkles his nose. ‘Man, that’s sad. We gotta start making more friends.’

‘Nah,’ Dennis says. ‘The only people trying to make friends in their forties are swingers and people who fucked up their lives the first time around.’

‘Speaking of.’ Mac nods at Dee, rambling through another impromptu speech up on the stage with Artemis beaming on her arm, all glammed up in a purple sequinned jumpsuit which does nothing for her height or figure. It’s still marginally better than what Dee’s wearing, however, which … are power suits still a thing? Is that what Dennis should be calling it? It’s harsh and shiny and black, anyway, reflecting too much light into everyone’s eyes. Dennis hates it. ‘You think she’s gonna cry?’

Dennis squints. ‘I think she might be crying already. It’s just difficult to tell when her face is so shiny.’

‘And I really just want to thank – well, not my brother,’ Dee is saying. ‘Or my dad. My fake dad, I mean – Frank, you all know Frank. Or my real dad, he also kind of sucks. So I guess none of the men in my life need thanking, is what I’m saying.’

There’s a heartfelt whoop from Artemis, right next to Dee’s ear.

‘Fuck, Artemis!’ Dee half-shouts. ‘Jesus. I mean, uh –’

‘Free bar’s that way, have yourselves a good night!’ Artemis yells into the mic, even as Dee tries to pull it out of her reach.

There’s a cheer from the assembled crowd and the noise level ratchets up as they turn back to their previous conversations. The DJ decides this is a good time to get the real party started and starts playing some unidentifiable synthed-up pop song. Dennis taps his foot irritably, trying not to get swept up into the beat. So many bands think they know what to do with synth these days, and so many of them are _wrong._

‘I wasn’t – finished – oh, fine, go ahead,’ Dee sighs into the mic. ‘You’re all drunks anyway, I know that’s what you’re here for. Have yourselves a good night at our expense.’

‘We will,’ Dennis calls over to her, swiping an extremely full glass of bourbon and coke from the bar when its owner isn’t paying attention. Dee gives him the finger.

Charlie spots them and wanders over. He’s juggling three different drinks in various alarmingly neon colours. One of them appears to be in a coconut with a crazy straw sticking out of it, as per Dee’s inexplicable choice to give the party a Hawaiian theme.

‘What’s up?’ he asks, trying to sip from two drinks at once. ‘She really pulled it off, huh?’

‘ _We_ really pulled it off,’ Dennis corrects him. ‘It was a team effort, Charlie. You know that better than anyone.’

He points up at the banner, strung between two brightly coloured paper lanterns, various spelling errors finally amended. Charlie beams.

‘Hey,’ Mac says, staring up at the wobbly portrait of Dee and Artemis. ‘Why d’you think they decided to go into business together in the first place?’ He nods at them, both still trying to make their precarious way down the stage stairs, clutching each other and giggling. ‘They’re spending like, all their time together lately. Do you think there’s something going on?’

‘What, like they’re fucking or something?’ Dennis frowns. He really doesn’t want to think about it.

‘Maybe.’ Charlie snorts, gesturing between Mac and Dennis with his half-full coconut, drink sloshing around inside. ‘Must be catching, huh?’

There’s a momentary silence, punctuated only by the peppy music and the sharply increasing volume of Dennis’s heartbeat in his ears.

‘What,’ he says. He clears his throat. ‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Did you just imply that gayness is catching, Charlie?’ Mac asks, clearly hung up on the wrong part of that exchange. ‘What fucking year is this?’

Charlie rolls his eyes. ‘Don’t take it like that, man. I just meant, you know. Dee’s following your lead.’

‘There’s no lead,’ Dennis says tightly. ‘There’s nothing to follow.’

He can feel Mac looking at him now but it doesn’t matter. He can’t look back. Any admittance would be one of guilt.

‘Okay,’ Charlie says slowly. ‘Whatever you say, man.’

‘Not whatever,’ Dennis snaps. ‘I _do_ say.’

‘So how come Mac’s been coming to work with you nearly every day for the last week?’ Charlie asks, raising his eyebrows. He laughs at the look on Dennis’s face. ‘Man, you really think we’re dumb, huh? You think we don’t know shit.’

‘But he’s wearing different clothes,’ Dennis says. Even as he’s saying it, he hears how incriminating it is; how much like an excuse it feels, his voice already weakening. ‘He’s – we don’t come in together.’

‘Yeah,’ Charlie snorts. ‘Like, three minutes apart. Real stealthy, bro.’

‘Shut up,’ Dennis says on reflex. ‘Shut up, I just – I need to think.’

‘Dennis,’ Mac murmurs, trying to take his elbow. Dennis steps back, out of his reach. Mac’s jaw tightens, his hand dropping.

‘What’s going on?’ Dee calls, strolling up in a semi-lurching gait with Artemis still attached to her side. She hiccups, zeroing in on Dennis with narrowed eyes. ‘You look _mad_.’

‘He is,’ Charlie confirms. ‘Because we know about all that.’

He gestures between Dennis and Mac again. A muscle jumps in Dennis’s temple. He’s getting really tired of that. He’d like to take that stupid coconut and shove it down Charlie’s throat.

‘Oh, _yeah_ ,’ Dee says, slurring her overemphasis. She hiccups again, hanging off Artemis’s shoulder as she turns to explain. There’s a look of amused affection on Artemis’s face that Dennis doesn’t remember ever seeing before. ‘They’ve been fucking for months. Sneaking around.’

‘Ooh,’ Artemis says, turning towards them with purring interest. ‘Do tell, boys.’

‘We haven’t,’ Dennis protests, before he can stop himself. His lips tighten into a thin line. ‘Not for months.’

Dee turns her head to look at him. ‘What?’ she asks blearily.

Charlie’s watching him too; Charlie and Artemis and Dee, all lined up in a row, waiting to hear Dennis speak. Explain himself. Their eyes are gleaming, greedy for more ammunition. Dennis’s throat constricts. This is the problem with relationships. People get too interested in your feelings, and then they ask questions; they try and force you to clarify yourself. They refuse to understand that there might not be anything deep down for them to dig up, or that even if there was, it wouldn’t be theirs to take.

‘It only happened, uh, last week,’ Mac says. He scratches the back of his neck, cheeks going a little pink. He hesitates. Dennis can see it out of the corner of his eye; a telegraphed, calculated risk. ‘It’s not a big deal.’

Dennis blinks. Mac doesn’t mean that; Dennis isn’t going to waste any time worrying about it. This is a bigger deal to Mac than any fucking thing that’s happened to them for the last thirteen years. It is. He’s only saying that to throw people off, because he thinks that’s what Dennis wants. 

It’s just harder to hear him say it than Dennis would have expected.

‘You mean all the fighting and stuff,’ Charlie starts, screwing up his face. ‘The arbitration. That was all – you weren’t fucking then?’

‘No,’ Mac confirms.

Dee almost hoots with laughter, leaning into Artemis, who stumbles a little under her weight.

‘All that mess and you weren’t even getting laid,’ she says dreamily. ‘Amazing. You don’t need to get me anything for Christmas this year, Dennis. This shitshow is more than enough.’

‘I’m glad you’re so entertained,’ Dennis snaps. He doesn’t know where to look; there seem to be eyes everywhere, watching him, smirking. The raspberry vodka and bourbon are mixing together and souring in his stomach, making him queasy. He flashes a glance at Mac. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

He walks away fast, not checking to see if Mac is following. But he can still hear Dee and Charlie laughing, all the way to the car.

\---

They’re quiet on the ride home.

‘You okay?’ Mac asks. His voice is calm and studied, like he’s been preparing for this since they left the party and that question is the only thing that he’s been able to come up with. It makes something ugly rear up inside Dennis, the space in his chest cavity where a fucking heart should be. Mac’s the cause of this; the one that made Dennis open. He’s the one who should be feeling bad, not Dennis.

‘Why do you care?’ Dennis snaps. ‘You got what you wanted, right? Turns out everybody already knows.’ He gives a sharp laugh. ‘They’ve been talking about it for months. You must be satisfied with that.’

Mac doesn’t say anything for a long time, long enough that Dennis looks over when they pull up to a stoplight.

‘What?’ he says, voice rough. ‘Say something.’

‘It’s not cool to be outed like that,’ Mac says. He leans his head back against the seat, staring out through the windshield like he’s looking at something much further away. ‘It sucks. It shouldn’t – it shouldn’t have been like that for you. You should have been able to choose.’

Dennis readjusts his hands on the steering wheel, feeling his nostrils flare. He can’t stop picturing what his own face must have looked like, when Charlie said that to them – to _him_. When Dee and Artemis came over and made a scene of it, a joke; when they’d laughed. When they’d looked at this thing between him and Mac, which is so huge and yet so fucking fragile that Dennis can barely bend his mind around it, and reduced it to something small and pathetic and _amusing_.

It’s going to continue like that, he knows. At least for a while. There’s no way to make anyone else understand, and all their friends are dicks. Just the idea of going through it again is exhausting.

‘Who says that’s what I’m doing?’ Dennis forces out. A car honks behind them and he curses. The Range Rover lurches forward, gears squealing. ‘Maybe this is all just a fluke. A phase.’ He spits it, a dull thud between them. ‘Maybe I was just curious to see what it’d be like.’

Mac just sits there in the seat next to him, so still he might as well be dead.

‘Aren’t you going to say something?’ Dennis snaps.

‘What’s the point?’ Mac asks, shooting him a look. Angry, for the first time since this conversation started. Dennis licks his lips. This is good; this is easier. ‘If that’s what this is, then nothing I say is gonna change that.’

‘You should fight,’ argues Dennis. ‘If you really wanted it, you’d fight.’

Mac laughs hoarsely. ‘Fight?’ he asks in disbelief. He turns sideways in his seat, staring Dennis down. ‘Dennis. _Dennis._ All I’ve done is fight. For the last fucking – decade, _God_.’ He laughs again, half-hysterical. He props himself up on the door of the car, staring out the window determinedly, as far as he can possibly get from Dennis. He sounds exhausted. ‘You can say it if you want. If it makes you feel better. I’ve heard it all before.’

Dennis looks back at the road, blinking hard. The knot in his stomach wrenches, reminding him he hasn’t eaten since lunch. God, if he throws up when they get back to the apartment he’s going to be so pissed. A waste of alcohol on top of an already shitty evening.

He taps his fingers against the steering wheel in an agitated, staccato rhythm. What gives Mac the right to judge him? It’s not like he’s any stranger to this particular dread; if anything, he’s the only person in Dennis’s life positioned to understand it. Mac came out a thousand times, in a thousand small ways, before it finally stuck. Dennis knows what he must have looked like when they were all laughing at him, because he’s seen that look on Mac’s face over and over again.

And he’d gone back to that, for Dennis. He’s been letting Dennis hide this, even though he obviously didn’t want to. _It’s not a big deal,_ he’d said. The biggest lie that’s come out of his mouth since he stopped pretending to be straight. He did it for Dennis, so that they’d stop trying to get to him. It didn’t work, but Mac had tried.

Dennis drives, unseeing, for the next ten blocks.

‘I’m sorry,’ he hears himself say after a while. Mac doesn’t answer. Dennis tries to make his voice firmer, shooting Mac a glance. ‘Really. I am.’

Mac grunts.

‘I didn’t mean it.’ Dennis swallows, forces the words out. ‘It’s not like that. I was just –’ He shakes his head, fastening his lips shut. That’s enough; that has to be enough. Any more and there’ll be nothing left inside, nothing for him to protect. 

He sees Mac’s head turn, out of the corner of his eye.

‘Okay,’ Mac says after a minute. He looks back out the window, half-covering his face with his hand so his voice is muffled. Is it warmer? Dennis can’t tell. ‘Thanks.’

He doesn’t speak again until they’re parked.

‘I get it,’ he says. Dennis’s hand pauses on his seatbelt, his whole body tensing up. Mac clears his throat. ‘It’s rough that it happened like that. I get that you’re angry.’

Dennis doesn’t say anything. Angry isn’t exactly right, or not anymore. It’s like he can just see it rolling out in front of him – weeks and months and _years_ of people knowing exactly what’s been going on inside him all this time, when he’d tried so hard to keep it hidden. Digging their fingernails into all the tender places.

He shivers abruptly. He doesn’t feel angry; he feels weary. Older, in the space of an hour.

Mac sighs. ‘But they’re gonna forget about it in like, a week, tops. You know that, right?’

Dennis leans his head back against the seat, closing his eyes. ‘You really think?’

‘Yeah, dude,’ Mac insists. ‘You know their attention span. Give them a week and they’ll forget it wasn’t always like this.’

This idea feels as impossible to Dennis as the sky folding in two. How could they not notice the difference, now that the facts have been made plain to them? Dennis’s life has been rewritten around the way Mac touches him. How could anyone ever forget?

‘It’s just so unfair,’ he says eventually. His voice sounds irritatingly small; a child protesting a broken toy. ‘They don’t know shit about relationships, and now they’re gonna try and rag on us for ours all the time. I know they will.’

Mac shifts in his seat. ‘Then we can give ‘em shit about theirs,’ he says eagerly. ‘It’s not like Dee can stretch anything out for longer than a week, and Charlie’s given up altogether. The less said about Frank, the better.’ His voice turns sweet. ‘We’ll show them, Den. We can do it.’

Dennis turns his head. He should tell Mac no, probably. He should hurt Mac again – say that this was a fun experiment, but it’s reached its expiration date. It might be the truth, after all. If something it took them this long to construct is already swaying at the first sign of a breeze, it can’t possibly survive out in the real world.

He should tell Mac to go home. Even if he can’t take any of it back, he might still be able to ruin it, and in the end it would amount to the same thing. Mac would hate him just as much, and would stay just as far away.

‘You know that implies we have to stay together,’ Dennis says. Mac’s watching him carefully, as if Dennis is dropping syllables never previously heard by man. ‘To rub it in their faces.’

‘Yeah,’ Mac says. ‘I know.’

His eyes are nervous and intent; he looks so young like that. Like they’re fifteen again and Dennis just asked him to do something stupid and he said _yeah, yes. I will if you will_. Just like he always has.

He should tell Mac to go home. He should.

‘Come on,’ Dennis says, undoing his seat belt. ‘I’m getting cold.’

\---

Mac follows him silently up the stairs and into the apartment, closing the door behind him. Dennis looks at him, waiting for Mac to try and feel his way through this one, poke Dennis until all the feelings come out.

But Mac doesn’t say anything. He just looks Dennis over and sighs. He takes Dennis’s face in his hands and kisses him.

Dennis pushes back against him immediately, trying to make it meaner, but Mac won’t let him. He keeps his hands gentle, the pressure of his lips soft. Mac touches him in a different way than anyone else ever has. Not just when they have sex, but when Mac kisses him too. It’s different. Objectively lacking in subtlety – not the best Dennis has ever had in terms of pure technical skill – but there’s so much feeling behind it that it’s impossible not to get lost and forget the criteria by which he should be grading it. Mac kisses him as if Dennis is lovable; as if he is good. A lot of people have felt that way about Dennis before because he’d tried so hard to make them, before a week or two passed and they found out the truth. But Mac knows Dennis – knows him better than anyone – and he still touches Dennis like that, like he’s someone who deserves to be treated with care.

They pull back. Dennis’s heart is hammering. The sound of their breathing is so, so loud.

‘Fuck me,’ he says. His hands tighten in Mac’s shirt, stretching the seams. He said it. It’s out there now, and he can’t take it back. Saying it is as good as deciding, isn’t it? And he has to do something with what’s inside him, this roiling mass of energy and feeling; he has to have something done to him. ‘You should fuck me.’

Mac blinks at him.

‘What?’ he asks. ‘Like, for real? For real, for real?’

‘Obviously, for real,’ Dennis snaps. ‘Do you know any other words?’

‘Not right now!’ Mac protests, already looking a little flustered.

‘Well, I mean it,’ Dennis says, feeling his face go a little red. It’s not the first time he’s asked for it, but it is the first time he’s really meant it. Somehow he thought Mac would instinctively know the difference. ‘You should do it.’

‘Fuck,’ Mac says. His eyes are very wide now, pupils blown huge. Despite himself, Dennis actually feels his cock twitch at how just the idea of it is hitting Mac, changing the chemical makeup of his face. ‘Um. Okay, yeah. This is kind of sudden, though, are you –’

‘I want it,’ Dennis interrupts him. ‘You know I want it, right? You know – I’ve said before. This isn’t new.’

Mac stops moving, looking at him. Dennis can hear his own breathing, frayed and strange.

‘I know _I_ want it,’ Mac says eventually. ‘But – you were kind of upset like, a minute ago, and –’ He hesitates, examining Dennis. It takes everything Dennis has not to break eye contact. ‘You know you don’t have to give me anything, right? Just ‘cause tonight was weird. You have to want it too.’

Dennis’s hands bunch and twist in the back of Mac’s shirt, restless. When he drops his gaze and tries to pull Mac in the direction of the bedroom, Mac resists.

‘I know,’ Dennis gets out. There’s a lump in his throat that won’t come out, no matter how many times he swallows. Mac says it like it’s so easy, to want something or not want it. Maybe for him, it is – he doesn’t have much fear of his own desires left, not now. But Dennis has always lived in that murky space, the fine line between the two. You can want something and still be afraid of it. You can want it more than anything in the world.

Mac shifts from foot to foot, sighing as he runs his hands over Dennis’s shoulders, leans their foreheads together. Dennis feels his own breath shudder out of him. It must hit Mac right in the face, weird and hot, but he doesn’t say anything. Dennis’s hands are shaking, so he clenches them tighter in the back of Mac’s shirt.

‘I don’t want to hurt you,’ Mac says reluctantly. He blows out an irritated breath, words tumbling out of him in a rambling stream. ‘Like, what if you hate it because you’ve never done it before and you’re not – you’re just – what if I get something wrong and you wind up thinking it’s the worst when maybe under other circumstances –’

‘And then what, my promising career getting my ass professionally fucked will be ruined?’ Dennis snaps, unable to help himself.

Mac’s cheeks bloom bright red.

‘Jesus.’ Dennis pulls back a little, rubbing his temples. He sighs, trying to gentle his voice. ‘Look, you don’t need to act like you’ve got a monster dick that’s going to cripple me, man. I’ve seen it, and I don’t think it poses any danger.’

Mac scowls. ‘Thanks a lot, dude.’

‘You know what I mean,’ Dennis cajoles. He grasps Mac’s chin in his hand and forces him up until they make eye contact. ‘Come on. You’ve done it before, right?’

‘Yeah, I –’

‘So what’s the big deal?’ Dennis asks, tugging Mac into the bedroom. ‘It’s been done before in human history and it’ll be done again. It’s been done by _you._ ’

‘Yeah, well, it’s not been done by us,’ Mac insists. ‘I’m serious, man. I want to get this right.’

Dennis stops trying to pull Mac in the direction of the bed and looks at him. He’s got his jaw set, all mulish and macho. So insistent that Dennis have a good time the first time he gets fucked that he’s practically clenching his fists about it. Ridiculous.

‘It is going to be right,’ Dennis says. His voice sounds weird, too full. The sound of it softens the look on Mac’s face. He twists his hand around in Dennis’s grip so he can interlink their fingers.

‘You really want to?’ Mac asks. Dennis can hear the curiosity in it now, starting to overtake the wariness. Mac’s eyes raking him over head to toe, like he’s trying to decide where to start.

Dennis’s throat clicks when he swallows.

‘I said so, didn’t I?’ He clears his throat, tugging on Mac’s hand again. ‘Now come on.’

Mac lets Dennis pull him this time, mouth back on Dennis’s as fast as he can get it. Dennis’s eyes close gratefully, sinking into the familiar rhythm as Mac seizes him by the waist and they shove each other over to the bed. Mac pushes him down onto it, half-climbing on top of him. He can’t seem to stay away from Dennis’s mouth – he keeps coming back to it, pressing small kisses to it and smudging Dennis’s lips open with his thumb. He kisses across Dennis’s cheek then back to his mouth like he’s got something to prove, trying to make Dennis’s grasping hands slow down.

‘Mac,’ Dennis says, his voice thready. His grip is too tight resting on Mac’s hips, he knows it is. Trying to hide the fact that his hands are shaking. Why can’t he be normal in bed? Always either too much or too little, never anywhere in between. ‘Mac.’

‘Yeah,’ Mac breathes, kissing him again. His mouth is liquid hot, the frame of his body perfect leaning over Dennis, hair hanging in his face and half-shielding his eyes. He brushes a hand over Dennis’s cheek, drifting down to his neck, and Dennis nearly flinches. Mac pauses. ‘Dennis?’

‘It’s fine,’ Dennis says instantly. ‘I’m fine.’

He’s shaking so hard it’s visible; his teeth are lightly clacking together. Mac notices it as soon as he pulls back. Dennis tries to stop it, to hold himself still, but he can’t. It’s useless. He bites his lip with frustration. He _wants_ this, wants it so badly he can barely talk. So why is it stressing him out so much? Why can’t he just calm down? Mac won’t want to fuck someone who’s going to freak out this hard before a dick’s gone anywhere near his ass.

‘Hey,’ Mac says. Dennis opens his eyes. Mac smiles at him, a little crooked. He doesn’t look like he’s about to take off. Dennis licks his lips. ‘You think you’re the first person to ever get nervous about this? C’mon, lie down.’

He plants a hand on Dennis’s chest and raises an eyebrow. He looks boyish, young again for an instant; Mac twenty years ago, offering Dennis a dare.

Dennis goes down slowly, letting himself be pushed. Mac watches him the whole time. His eyes glitter when Dennis is flat to the bed, shifting in his seat across Dennis’s waist. Dennis can see the line of his cock already, hard down the leg of his pants. His hands come to rest unsurely on Mac’s hips. He strokes the outside of Mac’s thighs, watching the way Mac’s throat bobs when he swallows.

‘You look so good,’ Mac tells him. He sounds like he means it; his voice has dropped, even though they haven’t done anything yet. ‘You’re so good, Den.’

Dennis closes his eyes against the almost painful ache in his chest. ‘You’re so easy. You haven’t even touched me yet.’

‘I know,’ Mac says. The grin in his voice is enough to make Dennis open his eyes. And then Mac straightens up, unbuttoning his shirt. Dennis’s grip tightens on Mac’s thighs, a pulse of want going through his stomach when Mac pulls off the shirt and discards it on the floor. Mac stares down at him, chest heaving a little. ‘You next.’

Dennis’s hands are shaky on the buttons of his shirt, but it’s hard to pay attention when Mac is watching him like that. He looks so enraptured, Dennis keeps having the urge to check what he’s seeing. It’s nothing special – just the same body as always being revealed, the same soft stomach and chest. But Mac doesn’t seem to get tired of it. Maybe it’s just the fact that it’s Dennis’s body, one that’s been forbidden to him for so long that the thrill of being allowed to touch hasn’t yet faded.

It occurs to Dennis that if he loses this, no one is going to want him as much as Mac does ever again. There just isn’t room for something like that twice in one lifetime. No one gets that lucky.

‘Dennis,’ Mac murmurs, derailing Dennis’s train of thought. His eyes are bright as Dennis peels off his shirt and lifts up awkwardly to toss it on the floor.

Mac crawls over him, skin hot against Dennis’s chest, and kisses him with both hands clasping his face, body pressing him into the bed. Dennis makes a needy sound, squirming around underneath Mac’s body. He spreads his legs wider for Mac to fit in between, breath hitching at the solid weight. He can’t get used to how big Mac feels on top of him; how it instinctively makes him want to writhe around, test the boundaries of what’s holding him down.

‘I wanna go down on you,’ Mac breathes in his ear, fingers playing with Dennis’s chest. He runs a nail over Dennis’s nipple, just this side of too hard, and Dennis’s stomach jumps.

‘Yes,’ Dennis gets out, shoving at Mac’s shoulders. He can do that; they can do that. He knows what to do with that, what he’s allowed to say and do. Everyone gets weird and intense when they’re having their dick sucked, so it won’t stand out. And he won’t have to think about anything, later, when Mac is fucking him; it’ll push all the thoughts right out of his head.

Mac snorts a little at his eagerness, a supremely unsexy sound. He rears back up and scoots back over Dennis’s body, trying to get both their pants undone at the same time. Dennis leans back on his elbows and watches, not helping.

Mac catches his eye and quirks an eyebrow, fiddling with the button on Dennis’s pants. ‘Enjoying the view?’ he asks.

‘Yeah,’ Dennis says intently. It’s more effective to drop compliments on Mac when he’s otherwise occupied, all the better to startle him. Plus it happens to be true; Mac is at his sexiest when he isn’t trying to be. Who cares how much someone can bench press when they’re crouched over you, forehead furrowed with the effort of trying to undo your pants?

Mac looks up at him, his mouth dropping open a little. He leans back up, close enough to Dennis’s mouth to kiss before he stops.

‘Lift your hips,’ he says softly, his tongue flickering out to touch Dennis’s lips.

‘What?’ Dennis asks, blinking. ‘Oh. Shit.’

Mac grins.

‘Shut up,’ Dennis mutters. He lifts his hips and they pull his pants off together, Mac shifting from one knee to another to keep his balance. He stares down at Dennis, chest rising and falling a little faster.

Dennis’s mouth dries up. He lifts his hips again slowly, pulling his underwear down and tossing them over the edge of the bed. Mac’s eyes rake over him, lingering on Dennis’s cock, flushed red and hard against his stomach. Dennis’s hand drifts down to it and starts stroking, slight catch in his breath when he runs a thumb over the tip and finds it already wet.

Mac’s throat clicks when he swallows. He stands up and pulls off the rest of his clothes with no more ceremony, settling back over Dennis so fast that Dennis hisses at the heat of his skin, the low groan Mac makes when his cock brushes against Dennis’s thigh.

‘You said you were going to,’ Dennis reminds him, sharp and needy. ‘I want –’

Mac shuffles down the bed and bends over him before Dennis has any more chance to complain. He doesn’t touch Dennis’s cock at first, just watching him touch himself from about an inch away, but it makes Dennis whine in the back of his throat anyway. Mac likes being between Dennis’s legs; he’s made that clear enough in the last week. He looks comfortable down there, pushing them further apart with the breadth of his shoulders, his hands spread wide over Dennis’s thighs. He leans into the crease of Dennis’s thigh and groin, burying his face and inhaling like a giant weirdo.

Dennis jolts. ‘What are you doing?’

‘You smell good,’ Mac tells him, unaffected. ‘I always want to lick you here.’ He licks a long stripe from under Dennis’s balls and over, meeting the underside of his cock. Dennis makes low, desperate sound, his hand gripping tight in Mac’s hair. Mac hesitates, fingertips drumming against Dennis’s thighs, before he seems to make his mind up about something. ‘And here.’

His voice has gone smokier. He slips a hand under Dennis’s back and tilts his hips upwards, tongue tracing down under Dennis’s balls and over his taint, tantalisingly close to his hole.

Dennis holds his breath, fighting not to squirm. He doesn’t say anything; he doesn’t know what he could say, what words might possibly come to mind. No one’s done this to him before, although obviously he knows what it feels like from the other side. He feels very – looked at. Very exposed.

Mac strokes his thumb across the skin he just licked, rubbing gently, setting off little sparks of sensation. Dennis bites his lip and tentatively pets at Mac’s head, stroking his hair before he grips more firmly, urging Mac on. Mac makes a groaning noise before he leans in again, starting off with small strokes of his tongue around Dennis’s sensitive flesh before he points his tongue and presses inside, just a little. 

Dennis’s hips jerk. It’s such a weird sensation, he can’t decide whether or not he likes it. Mac’s mouth is so wet with saliva Dennis can feel it dripping between his cheeks, and that’s hotter than it should be, why is it hot? Because Mac’s into this, maybe; he’d said he was, said he’d thought about it. God, there are a lot of nerves lighting up down there. Dennis has played around with his ass before, obviously, but it feels different when it’s – when Mac’s massaging him with his tongue, alternating long slow stripes with prim little licks and God, Jesus, that’s –

Dennis hisses, widening his legs and tipping his hips up at a steeper angle. He starts stroking his cock again seeing as Mac appears to have completely forgotten about it, and when he touches himself at the same time as Mac’s tonguing him, he can’t help the noise that comes out of his mouth. He squirms against Mac’s mouth, aware that he’s panting and unable to stop it. It’s a different kind of pleasure than he’s used to, shocky and really intense, and he can feel it starting to build into something bigger, low in the base of his stomach.

Mac’s hands shift on Dennis’s thighs, pushing him further back to get more access, and Dennis makes a high, sharp sound. He pulls one leg up to spread himself further and Mac grabs it, nudging it up and over his shoulder. His nose tickles the sensitive skin just under Dennis’s balls.

Dennis jolts. ‘Oh, fuck.’

Mac pulls back a little, his eyes intent on Dennis’s face as he brushes a fingertip against his hole. He knows exactly what he’s doing, playing with Dennis where he’s already sensitive, and somehow the stab of irritation Dennis feels at that just makes everything spiral tighter, the low hum of pleasure in his stomach building.

Mac’s lips are red and puffy and he’s breathing really hard, eyes glittering. ‘Okay?’ he asks, his voice rough. He pulls away for a second, rummaging around with something, and when his finger returns it’s slick and cold with lube, making Dennis jump.

‘You could have warmed it up first,’ he complains.

Mac doesn’t reply, just keeps watching him with his eyes half-lidded as he probes with his fingertip, watches every spasm that passes over Dennis’s face.

‘Fuck, you’re tight,’ he says, his voice low. His eyes drop down and he leans in again, licking delicately around his finger as he pushes it in deeper, probing. That can’t taste good, but Dennis can’t bring himself to care. Mac certainly isn’t acting like it’s a hardship – every time Dennis twitches it seems to give him pleasure, as if they’re hooked into each other somehow; as if just watching Dennis get off is enough. Dennis hasn’t seen him touch his cock yet, although he’s been grinding a little against the sheets, eyelids fluttering at the drag of cotton. Dennis tightens his grip around the base of his own cock, biting his lip. 

Mac slowly adds another finger, easing it in next to the first. He adjusts the angle of his wrist so they’re kind of rocking together, Dennis moving on his fingers as Mac thrusts slowly inside. He looks up at Dennis with his eyes huge, his lips parted, and Dennis makes sure to hold his gaze. If nothing else – even if this goes wrong in about five minutes and everything gets ruined – Dennis wants Mac to remember this, remember the way Dennis took his fingers, the way Dennis could make him feel. He should never be able to forget.

‘That’s it,’ Mac murmurs. Dennis makes a frustrated noise, shoving down harder. It’s vaguely alarming how much this is affecting him, even without Mac getting anywhere near his prostate. Something about the nerves he’s striking every time he thrusts his fingers in and out, the slight drag of friction despite the slickness – it’s – it’s really – ‘You look so good, you look –’

‘Give me another one,’ Dennis pants. ‘I want –’

‘Yeah?’ Mac asks, pulling out for a second so he can ease in a third finger. Dennis bites his lip at the burn, jerking his cock to make up for it. God, the noises Mac’s fingers are making as they pump in and out of him; it’s obscene. ‘Jesus. You like that?’

‘Yes,’ Dennis gets out. ‘Obviously I like it, fuck – fuck me –’

He can hear the way his voice has changed; hoarser and more serious somehow, not just wanting to be fucked in the abstract anymore but here and now, fantasy and reality finally meeting up. Mac crooks his fingers, skating against something electric but not quite getting there, and Dennis hisses in a breath through his teeth.

Mac loses his rhythm, blinking up at Dennis like he thinks he’s done something wrong. Dennis growls, losing patience; he reaches down to hold Mac’s wrist in place so he can shove down solidly for a couple of euphoric moments. He lets out a gasp of relief, moaning at the pressure, right where he needs it. He could get himself off like this, he realises – he could get off just on this, using Mac’s hand to fuck himself –

‘Jesus _Christ_ ,’ he hears Mac say thickly.

Dennis opens his eyes, biting his lip hard. His cock is standing out straight and hard against his belly, the head so tight and wet Dennis is almost afraid to keep touching himself. Mac is straight up just staring at his asshole, watching the way his fingers are moving in and out of Dennis’s body. He isn’t putting up any resistance at all to the way Dennis is holding him still. His whole body is tight and tense, his hips pressed to the bed while he clutches at the slick skin of Dennis’s thigh, knuckles standing out in sharp relief.

‘Now,’ Dennis says, too pent up to produce anything more coherent. ‘You should do it now.’

‘Yes,’ Mac agrees fervently, nearly losing his balance and toppling over on Dennis as he reaches over to grab the lube and then a condom out of the nightstand drawer. ‘Shit, sorry –’

‘It’s fine,’ Dennis says tightly, throwing his head back on the pillow. ‘Just –’

‘How do you want it?’ Mac asks him, pulling the condom wrapper open and rolling it down over his dick, eyes going half-lidded as he tries not to thrust into the touch. He drizzles lube on his cock, biting his lip. His mouth falls open and this little breathy moan comes out and Dennis – Dennis does a perfect sit-up for the first time in his life, launching up so he can touch Mac’s cock, tangle their fingers together. He was so nervous a week ago just at the idea of having it in his hand. It’s so wet with lube that it’s slippery in his hand and he massages it a little, just to watch the way tortured bliss rolls across Mac’s face.

People talk a lot of shit about sex, but the thing they say most often is how much better it is – how much more intense, how intimate – if feelings are involved. Dennis used to hate that. How was he supposed to have feelings for someone _before_ they had sex? If sex wasn’t a battering ram to get him where he needed to go, then what the hell use was it?

‘Please,’ Dennis says. His throat locks at the way that makes Mac’s eyes burst open, his cock twitch in Dennis’s hand. Mac asked him a question but he can’t figure out how to answer. It doesn’t seem to matter. He wants it whatever way he can get it, any way.

‘Get on your back,’ Mac tells him. His voice is strained. Dennis thumps backward onto the pillows as Mac shuffles up the bed on his knees towards him.

‘You ready?’ Mac asks. He smooths a hand up Dennis’s thigh and pushes his legs open a little wider, nails scratching against the lit-up nerves of Dennis’s skin.

Dennis arches his back. Time to think determined thoughts. This part is probably going to suck. ‘Yep.’

‘Okay. Fuck.’

Mac’s cock feels huge pushing in, way bigger than three fingers, which is information Dennis will be taking to the grave. He clenches his eyes shut. Probably anything would feel huge when you’ve never had a dick in your ass before. Probably even a pencil dick would feel colossal. Jesus Christ.

Mac pauses halfway and Dennis lets out a gasping breath he didn’t even realise he was holding.

‘You okay?’ Mac asks. His voice is strained, the veins standing out in his forearms where he’s bracing himself.

‘Just give me a sec,’ Dennis says tightly. God, it has to get easier at some point, right? This can’t be what everyone’s moaning and groaning about. Such a weird sensation, absolute fullness; the pressure against every part of his insides.

‘Hey.’ Mac looks Dennis in the eye. ‘You gotta relax, man, or I’m not gonna be able to get it in.’

‘Why don’t you fucking relax?’ Dennis spits. ‘Are you the one having a cock jammed up your ass? No? Then I’ll thank you to keep your opinions to yourself.’

‘God, still so mouthy,’ Mac says, sounding amazed. A wave of something frighteningly reverential passes over his face briefly, gone so fast Dennis might have imagined it. ‘Getting fucked and still full of it.’ He pushes forward a little more, eyes on Dennis the whole time. Dennis lets out a shock of air, muscles twinging. Mac watches him carefully, his eyes hooded. ‘That good?’

‘I don’t know,’ Dennis says cautiously. He adjusts his fingers on Mac’s shoulders, sticky with sweat. He can’t get enough fucking air. ‘Try it again.’

Mac does it again, slowly. The thing about this position is that they’re forced into staring at each other the whole time, and Dennis is making some kind of weird face, he knows he is, but the thought of Mac paying such close attention to how it makes Dennis look – to the way his cock is making Dennis feel, watching the effects of it play across Dennis’s face – crosses some wires somewhere, makes his stomach swim. He feels almost dizzy.

‘Okay,’ he breathes. He rolls his hips down into the pressure and it feels – weird and sparky and good, in a really intense kind of way. Like when Mac was rimming him but just – more. ‘Good. Try that – yeah, again – yeah –’

‘Yeah?’ Mac asks, thrusting cautiously a couple more times.

‘Yeah,’ Dennis says again, and then keeps saying it as Mac stops being cautious and starts putting his back into it, building up a rhythm that makes Dennis hit the mattress with the palm of his hand. ‘Yeah, yeah, _yes_ –’

He yanks Mac down to kiss, his mouth hugely wide and gasping. Mac semi-collapses over him, holding himself up with one hand as he fucks Dennis with short, sharp strokes.

‘Fuck,’ Mac says tightly, hanging his head. He dips into Dennis’s neck and bites it like he’s biting himself, trying to buy time. Dennis’s whole body contracts as he lets out a choked sound, his legs hitching up around Mac’s waist and his muscles squeezing around Mac’s cock. Mac shudders, his abs drawing up against Dennis’s bobbing cock.

‘Touch me,’ Dennis gets out. God, it’s barely been ten minutes. Maybe they spent too long on foreplay, winding him up. But it felt too good, it _feels_ too good, and he wants to come so badly, he can feel it in the tips of his fingers. His cock is _aching._ ‘Just – touch – please –’

Mac shoves a hand down between them and hits Dennis’s cock at a weird angle, the head slick and skating along his palm before he wraps his fingers around it and gets with the program, giving it a series of brisk, hard tugs. Dennis sucks in a sharp breath, throwing his head back against the pillow. It’s impossible to think in a straight line when Mac is fucking everything out of his head; the rhythm’s too fast and the feel of Mac’s hand on his cock is too intense. His orgasm is being pulled out of him from the base of his stomach, slowly but surely unspooling.

‘I’m gonna come.’ The words jolt out of him with the force of Mac’s thrusts. ‘Fuck, yes, Mac, I’m –’

‘Yeah,’ Mac says, staring down at him as he jerks Dennis’s cock and lets his thrusts go sharp and rabbit-fast. ‘Yeah, come for me, Den, you’re so beautiful, I –’

Dennis’s face screws up as he comes, the pleasure hitting him in a wave so intense his muscles seize up. He lets out a groan as he grinds down on Mac’s cock and Mac jerks him through it, shocky waves radiating down through Dennis’s thighs.

He wraps his arms around Mac’s shoulders and pulls him down again, kissing him open-mouthed and breathless as Mac’s thrusts go uncoordinated and erratic. He groans into Dennis’s mouth as his hips pump once, twice, and he comes, shoving hard inside Dennis, so hard it makes Dennis groan again, flinching with aftershocks.

They lie there for a long moment. Dennis strokes the short, sweaty hairs at the back of Mac’s neck, feeling his body relax by slow degrees. Eventually he pulls back and pokes Mac in the chest.

‘Off,’ he says drowsily. ‘And out.’

‘Oh yeah.’ Mac rakes a hand over his hair and pulls out with a wince. He makes a cursory attempt to clean them up with tissues from the nightstand, discards the condom in the trashcan and thumps down onto the bed beside Dennis.

They drift in and out for a while, hands meeting on the mattress.

‘Good?’ Mac asks. He sounds half asleep.

‘Good,’ Dennis repeats. He shifts onto his side, turning to look at Mac. ‘It was good.’

‘Good.’ Mac smiles with his eyes closed, like an idiot. ‘And you’re okay?’

Dennis rolls his eyes. ‘Of course I’m okay. You fingered me for like eight years. And I’m not some fragile little twink.’

‘Could’ve fooled me,’ Mac replies, snorting gently. ‘Except you’re not young enough to be a twink anymore.’

‘Better an old twink than a wannabe bear.’

Mac opens his eyes and rolls onto his side, prodding Dennis in the sternum. ‘You take that –’

‘What about you, anyway?’ Dennis cuts him off. He swats at Mac’s hand, catching it and holding it. He can’t stop himself asking; Mac hasn’t said it yet. ‘You liked it?’

‘I loved it,’ Mac says, without any hesitation. It’s so honest that it sends a flare of heat lashing out through Dennis’s stomach, waking him up. His spent cock twitches.

‘Really?’ he asks. It sounds small and needy, helplessly preening. He wishes he could bite it back in but it’s out now.

‘Really.’ Mac’s gaze doesn’t even waver. No one’s ever looked at Dennis like that _after_ sex – there’s always been something getting in the way, after. Always something Dennis didn’t do right. ‘It was – uh.’

Here he seems to lose his confidence, looking down at his hands. His cheeks are red, so red – red from exertion, from sex. ‘I felt –’ He trails off, can’t seem to find a way to finish his sentence. Dennis waits, basking in the fuzzy warm feeling created by how hard Mac is trying. He doesn’t really expect it to go anywhere, but then Mac says: ‘It was perfect.’

Dennis swallows. He makes himself cock a sceptical eyebrow. ‘Sex is never perfect.’

It’s true. There’s too much sweating and it requires too many unflattering positions. Things never work out how you picture them in your head, and people don’t react in the way you predict. Part of the reason Dennis had filmed so many of his sexual encounters was because he wanted to perfect his approach, and the disappointing results of that effort made him aware of the inconsistencies and incompatibilities that bar human beings from reaching that particular aesthetic pinnacle. Every time he’d thought, in the past, that he had finally done it, something had always turned out to be wrong. He’d been too red-faced, or the lighting had looked weird, or the other person seemed strange to him when he played it back. Like earlier, when he was shaking so much. And all the weird faces he must have made. There’s always something; Dennis knows. 

‘This was,’ Mac says simply.

‘You don’t need to tell me that.’ Dennis is frowning now. ‘I’m not going to skip out on you if you don’t make nice after we fuck. You don’t need to lie.’

‘I’m not lying. I know what words mean, Dennis.’

‘Debatable.’ If Mac would just admit that he’s right, then they can stop talking about this and go to sleep. Dennis can feel the rush of all the other things he doesn’t want to think about lurking on the fringes of his brain, and he doesn’t want to stay awake long enough for them to get him. 

‘It was perfect,’ Mac says again. Dennis clenches his jaw firmly shut. The way Mac keeps saying that word – _perfect_ – is worming its way inside Dennis, down somewhere deep he’s afraid he won’t be able to dig out. Mac doesn’t sound desperate, or like he’s pleading with Dennis to believe him. He’s just repeating it in the same tone he’d use to relay a drinks order. Like it’s a fact of life. ‘Just accept it and move on, bro.’

‘I told you not to call me bro when we’re fucking.’

‘We’re not fucking right now.’

‘When we’re in bed,’ Dennis amends. ‘And/or when we’re fucking,’ he adds in a louder tone at Mac’s raised eyebrow. ‘God, get it together.’

‘Get it together?’ Mac asks, half-laughing. His eyes are sparkling, actually sparkling. Full of light and something else; the joy that’s been missing from every sex tape Dennis has ever played back. ‘I was inside you like, ten minutes ago, Dennis. I’m not gonna have it together for a really long time. Don’t act like you’re so cool with it either when you’re clearly freaking out.’

‘I’m not –’ Dennis argues on reflex, caught up in it for a second – _inside you. I was inside you ten minutes ago._ He squirms a little, feeling the ache.

‘Which is another thing that makes it perfect, by the way,’ Mac says, looking a little shy now. ‘Because I always knew you’d freak out, because you’re – you, and so it’s like, you know, this is the most us sex we could have.’

There’s a pause.

‘The most us sex we could have,’ Dennis repeats, not even sure that sentence makes sense in English. ‘And that makes it – perfect.’

‘Yeah,’ Mac beams, evidently pleased that Dennis finally gets it. ‘Obviously. What else could I have meant?’

‘I don’t know,’ Dennis says blankly. ‘Like – that it was really cinematic or that I looked good or something. You’ve seen the tapes. I don’t know.’

‘You did look good,’ Mac tells him. ‘I know you already know that. And it probably was fucking cinematic. But I meant more that it was like, you and me. You know?’

‘Yes,’ Dennis says with a little difficulty. He’s still holding Mac’s hand, he realises. He looks down at it and can’t remember who moved first, or how it happened. Mac squeezes it, puts his other hand on top to cradle Dennis’s between his own.

‘And that made it special,’ Mac finishes, because he just does not know when to stop.

Dennis swallows hard, feeling a queasy jolt in his stomach. He should have realised this was going to backfire on him. Trust Mac to take a fool proof method of escape and turn it into an anchor. Dennis’s eyes feel stuck open and dry, butterflies pinned to Styrofoam. He can’t look at Mac.

But Mac doesn’t make him. He just brings Dennis’s hand to his mouth and kisses it. His mouth leaves a slick of saliva behind, cold and wet. Dennis finally closes his eyes.

‘Okay,’ he says, his voice brittle. ‘Okay. Fine. Now – come and get in bed so we can go to sleep.’ He pulls at the sheets and tugs at Mac’s wrist, a thousand percent ready to turn his brain off. All he needs right now is this; everything else can wait until morning. ‘Come get under the covers. But turn the light out first.’

‘Why is it me who has to get out of bed?’

‘Because you’re the one who fucked my brains out,’ Dennis says around a jaw-cracking yawn, wriggling under the cool sheets. ‘The top gets the lights, everybody knows that.’

‘You are so full of shit,’ Mac tells him.

But he gets up to turn out the lights anyway, just like Dennis knew he would.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> urgh god. i have a lot of feelings and zero coherence. the response to this fic has been so great and generous and kind, i love sunny fandom, i hope y'all enjoy this final piece <3

Dennis doesn’t set foot in the bar for nearly a week after the night of the studio opening.

‘C’mon, man,’ Mac groans, trying to drag Dennis out of bed by the wrist on the sixth day of his self-imposed strike. ‘It’s making everyone get weird again, not having you there. Charlie was talking about getting the sex doll out of the basement yesterday. It’s not a good vibe.’

‘I’m sick,’ Dennis repeats stubbornly. He’s already said it three times; it’s his story and he’s sticking to it.

‘You’re not sick.’ Mac gives up, letting go of Dennis’s arm. He stares down at him with his arms folded across his chest, fuming. ‘You’re just being a coward.’

Dennis smarts. ‘I am not. I went through a traumatic experience, and now I am recuperating.’

‘I went through it with you,’ Mac objects. ‘And I’m completely fine.’

‘Good for you,’ Dennis says, turning on his side and burrowing back under the covers. It’s warm under here; warm and safe and it smells like them. ‘Don’t let the door hit you on the ass on the way out.’

Mac sighs. He sits down on the edge of the bed, his voice turning wheedling. ‘C’mon, man. Who’ve I got to flirt with when you stay at home? It’s boring without you.’

Dennis rolls back over, despite his better judgement. Mac looks genuinely frustrated. He’s been trying every day to get Dennis to come back to work, but because he’s so bad at manipulating people, his methods have been the same every time: he just keeps asking the same question over and over again, getting progressively more irritated and bewildered when Dennis doesn’t do what he wants. It never seems to occur to him to utilise the natural leverage that springs from being in a relationship with the person you’re trying to persuade – not once has he threatened to withhold sex or touching, or tried to make Dennis feel bad by holding himself at a distance. Probably because he knows how fast he’d fold, but still. It’s unsettling. It’s probably the first thing Dennis would have tried.

Mac just really seems to miss having him around. It makes Dennis wonder how he managed when Dennis was in North Dakota, but then again, he’d seen how the gang was coping once he got back. Some small comfort, to know they’d lost it just as much as he had.

He gives Mac a winsome smile. ‘Then you better get to work so you can get through it faster,’ he says sweetly.

It seems less funny after Mac leaves, muttering about Uber costs as he slams the door. Dennis lies there in bed for a long time with his eyes closed, but he doesn’t fall back to sleep. He isn’t even really trying. Eventually he gets up with a huff and goes through the kitchen, makes coffee, scrolls vacantly through his Twitter feed while he waits for it to cool enough to drink. It’s aggravating to be taking this much time off work and not even be able to enjoy it. It should feel like an impromptu holiday, but instead he just lies around the apartment waiting for Mac to come home, stuck in the cycle of his thoughts, wondering what they’re all doing at the bar without him. It sucks.

It’s not that Dennis is scared. Mac’s wrong about that. It’s just that every time he thinks about the looks on their faces at the party, he feels sick. How is he supposed to want to go into work when he knows what’s waiting for him there? No one wants to be looked at like that – as if they’re a puzzle that’s finally been solved and hey, it turns out not to have been made of that many pieces after all.

He keeps imagining them talking behind his back about it, sneering and exchanging condemnatory anecdotes. Have they been laughing at how ridiculous Dennis has been all these years, how repressed? As if they’re any better. Musing over how much sense it makes – how they’d known all along – saying to each other, _I always thought he was a little – didn’t you think – yeah, I thought –_

_So pathetic._

Dennis slams his phone down on the kitchen table harder than he meant to; the sharp clatter makes him wince.

A nasty thought occurs to him. Is Mac laughing along with them? It would make sense, in a way. Mac struggles to dissent from the opinion of a crowd; the approval of others has an almost hypnotic effect on him because he’s a follower, not a leader, like Frank has always said. Something to do with having such superlatively neglectful parents. Would he follow along in this, too – laughing at how far behind him Dennis has been, how long it took him to come around? Nausea floods Dennis’s stomach, so intense he presses the palm of his hand to his mouth. Is Mac telling them about all the things they’ve done together – all the ways in which he’s seen Dennis open, nervous, weak?

Mac wouldn’t do something like that, not now. Would he?

Dennis swipes his hand across his face, groaning out loud. It’s so much harder to distract himself from shit like this when he’s alone in the apartment all day. If Mac was here, they could – but he’s not. No one’s here. Dennis is alone again.

Or at least he is until Dee turns up at his door in the middle of the afternoon with a martyred expression and an enormous takeout cup from the fancy coffee shop all the way across town.

She thrusts the coffee at him, eyes on the ceiling.

‘Take it,’ she says. ‘Or I’m going to force-feed you myself, I swear to God.’

‘You know that’s going to be cold by now,’ Dennis tells her, taking it anyway. He eyes the cup with trepidation. ‘All seven gallons of it.’

It’s 2PM and he still isn’t dressed; he hasn’t even showered or brushed his teeth. There didn’t seem much point when he clearly wasn’t going anywhere. He’d been midway through an episode of _Vanderpump Rules_ when Dee pressed the buzzer, and he can still hear the cast sniping at each other over his shoulder, hissing and preening like peacocks. He’s not exactly eager to get back to it, but after five solid days of daytime television, it’s starting to exert a bizarre draw over him. He hadn’t realised voices could go up that high without shattering glass.

‘Figured you could do with the caffeine, if you can’t even get out of bed,’ Dee snaps.

Dennis’s mouth tightens. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Mac’s on my ass about apologising to you every free second he has, and seeing as you’re not coming into work, he has a lot of free seconds,’ Dee says tersely. She folds her arms across her chest, finally focusing on his face. ‘It’s really fucking annoying.’

A bolt of something bright shoots through Dennis’s chest. ‘That’s Mac for you,’ he agrees, propping himself up against the doorway. Mac hasn’t been laughing behind his back; Mac’s been fighting his corner, even when Dennis isn’t there. Even when he’s been nagging Dennis at home, irritated and frustrated by Dennis’s inability to move on. Mac’s been _campaigning._

Dennis can feel a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, so he hides it by taking a sip of lukewarm coffee. Hazelnut. At least she’d shelled out for something real, not the cheap shit.

‘Urgh. Are you _happy_ about that? Gross,’ Dee says. Dennis’s smile vanishes. ‘Anyway, I’m not here to say sorry. I don’t see what the big deal is. I wasn’t even the only one making fun of you! Charlie was there too. Why should I be the one to apologise?’

‘Right,’ Dennis says, starting to close the door in her face. ‘I’ll be sure to tell Mac you came by to double down. Thanks for the coffee.’

Dee sticks her foot in the door. Dennis pauses, and then presses against it until she visibly winces in pain.

‘Wait,’ she says grimly. She inhales, her cheeks pinched. ‘Jesus. That really hurts.’

‘It’s supposed to,’ Dennis says in a pleasant voice. ‘Because I want you to leave, get it?’

‘Or because you want to punish me.’ The line of her mouth has gone tight, a slash of red across her paling face. Dennis presses a little harder. She makes a choked noise before more words come spilling out. ‘But I still don’t get why this is my fault. I’m not the one fucking someone I’m ashamed of.’

‘What?’ Dennis frowns, letting up on the door a fraction. ‘I’m not ashamed of him. When did I ever say that?’

‘You didn’t have to,’ Dee snorts, still strained. ‘We all saw the look on your face.’

‘That wasn’t about him specifically,’ Dennis tells her, although he’s already replaying the moment and – had it looked like that? Is that what Mac had thought when Dennis stepped back, out of his reach? Then Dennis had said, in the car on the way home – _maybe this is all just a fluke. Maybe I was just curious_.

And Mac had just sat there, like all the air had been let out of him. Fresh out of denial.

Dennis swallows. ‘It was just about, like –’ he gestures with the hand not holding the latte, trying to encapsulate the general horror of the situation. ‘You know.’ He isn’t saying anything Dee doesn’t already know, Dennis reminds himself. But it doesn’t stop his hand from shaking. He balls it into a fist at his side so she won’t see. ‘Wanting a guy at all.’

‘Oh.’ Dee studies him for a moment. Dennis counts the seconds that pass while the cogs turn in her head, the mechanisms shifting. She cautiously withdraws her foot from the door, clearing her throat when Dennis doesn’t slam it closed. ‘Weird. Well, you don’t need to worry about that with me. Obviously.’

‘Worry about what?’

‘Homophobia.’ Dee’s jaw tightens. It’s such a familiar tic that it takes Dennis a moment to realise he’s recognising it at least partially from looking at his own face in the mirror. ‘Because, you know.’

Dennis shrugs, mystified. ‘What?’

Dee sighs. ‘Jesus Christ, Dennis, where have you been? Because of me and Artemis.’

‘Oh.’ Dennis raises his eyebrows. ‘ _Oh._ Really? That’s a real thing?’

‘Yes,’ Dee says tensely. She folds her arms across her chest. ‘And if you give me shit about it, Den, I swear to God –’

‘I’m not, I’m not.’ Dennis holds his hands up. He pauses. ‘Although. Artemis, really?’

‘Mac, really?’ Dee asks sarcastically.

Dennis scowls. ‘You came over to apologise,’ he reminds her. ‘And you’re doing a really shitty job so far.’

‘Well, you’re doing a shitty job of taking it.’ She gives a sudden laugh. ‘Hey, is that what Mac –’

‘Shut up,’ Dennis snaps.

Dee’s mouth thins out with anger but she obeys, staring over his shoulder into the apartment like he doesn’t even exist.

Dennis taps his fingers against the edge of the door. What the fuck are they going to do here? It’s not like Dee genuinely feels guilty about him getting outed – she can’t, she’s not made that way. Dennis wouldn’t have given it a second thought either, in her place. It’s all so pointless; all this posturing, the apology, the coffee. Mac pushes for empty gestures like these because he wants things to work like they do in movies, with easy conclusions and simply solved interpersonal conflicts, whereas Dee just never has the first idea of how to make anything better. Her best guess is usually to exchange one slight for another.

But maybe this time she should get points for effort, all the same. She wasn’t the only one who laughed at him, but she is the only one who’s tried to make up for it. She drove all the way across town and then back over here when she didn’t have to. She stayed to argue, even when Dennis ground the bones in her foot together trying to shut the door in her face. How often does she care enough about wanting to fix something that she’ll expend that kind of effort, even if she doesn’t know what direction to expend it in?

He lets the door fall open begrudgingly. Dee’s gaze shunts over to him, too surprised to stop herself. Dennis clears his throat. ‘You wanna come in?’

‘So how long has it been going on?’ he asks, when they’re seated at the kitchen table. ‘With Artemis, I mean.’

Dee shrugs one shoulder. ‘Can’t remember,’ she says. She pauses, staring down into the _Best Sister_ cup Dennis had pulled out of the cupboard for her. He’d refused to share any of the latte on sheer principle, but she’d just grumbled and made her own instant instead. The corner of her mouth twitches – a smile, something real and rare, gone before Dennis can latch onto it. ‘It’s been kind of – off and on again, but. It started sometime last year.’

‘What?’ Dennis asks, startled. ‘What, like – before the studio and everything? Before –’

‘Yes, before Mac moved out,’ Dee says. She shoots a glance at him, her jaw tight again. ‘The world doesn’t revolve around your fucked-up drama, you know. Other things do happen occasionally.’

‘I know that,’ Dennis says defensively. ‘But I didn’t know I was supposed to be looking out for – this.’ He gives a short laugh. ‘Never knew it was a risk. Should’ve kept a better watch on you and your friends.’

Dee lifts her hands. ‘What friends?’ she snaps. ‘All I’ve got is –’ She purses her lips, staring down into her cup again. She takes a calming breath. Dennis wonders if she ever thinks about it like he does – a gentle hand on his chest, rising and falling with his breaths. An anchoring weight. ‘Things are different, with her. Than they are with you guys.’

‘I should fucking hope so,’ says Dennis. ‘Don’t come anywhere near me with that shit. Jesus.’

‘Oh, like you’re any better.’ Dee glares. ‘God, you think you’re above it all, don’t you? Think you’re so special.’ She snorts. ‘Well, turns out you’re just like the rest of us, Dennis. A real boy with human fucking feelings.’

‘Shut up,’ Dennis says tensely. ‘Just –’

‘We all knew what was going on with you and Mac, all of us,’ Dee taunts, eyes narrowed. ‘We knew before you did.’

‘Shut up,’ Dennis says, louder. His voice is disarmingly thin. Dee’s mouth clamps shut. ‘God,’ Dennis gets out a half-laugh, hoarse with disbelief. _A real boy._ He can almost imagine Mac saying that – it seems like something he’d laugh at Dennis about. But it wouldn’t be mean like that, or at least not as cruel as it sounds coming from Dee. Not contemptuous. _‘_ Can you not be a huge bitch about this for like, one second? I thought you came round here to make this better, not tear me a new one.’

‘I did,’ Dee tells him shrilly. ‘I just –’ She stares at him. ‘It’s just – you know what it’s like.’ She looks away, her eyes shuttering. ‘It just happens, that’s all.’

They sit in silence for what feels like forever, although when Dennis checks his phone it’s only been five minutes. He sighs, scrubbing his hands over his face. ‘So what are we gonna do here?’ he asks, not expecting an answer.

Dee shrugs uncomfortably. ‘There’s nothing to do,’ she says. She sits back in her seat, sighing as she clutches her coffee, winding her fingers around the cup. ‘It’s just how things are.’

‘Are you gonna be an asshole all the time?’ Dennis asks, eyes narrowed. ‘About – you know.’

‘You and Mac?’ She smirks. ‘Depends. Are you gonna be gross all the time?’

Dennis doesn’t answer. Mac does touch him a lot when they’re alone, and he probably isn’t going to be shy about doing it in front of other people now that they’re out. He’ll do it to express ownership, and to remind everyone of their status in the context of the gang, and because he likes doing it. Thinking about touching Mac in return is a little harder. Dennis has never had that before – he’s never had to be that person who’s part of a couple, not for real. Is Mac going to expect him to put on exorbitantly public displays of affection? He’d probably like that. Mac never gets tired of being claimed in front of other people.

It’s alright when they’re alone. It doesn’t feel unusual at all, then. When it’s just the two of them, Dennis forgets that there are lines they didn’t used to cross, parts of Mac that have only recently become accessible to him. It’s barely been two weeks and yet he forgets all the time, that there was a point in his life when they weren’t together like this.

This is such a hideously sentimental thought that he is obviously never going to express it to Dee, or to any other living being, but he’s at a loss as to how else to make her understand.

‘It’s not the same thing,’ he tries, frowning. ‘For me to just be – you know – and then for you to be like, giving me a hard time for it.’ He struggles briefly. He wishes Mac were here. He wishes they were alone in Dennis’s room together, and that Mac was laughing at him, and that the sun was warming their bed. ‘For being happy.’

Dee’s hands have gone tight around her coffee cup. ‘You’ve done that to me before,’ she points out. She isn’t looking at him; she’s staring down at the woodgrain of the table bitterly, as if she doesn’t even expect it to hold any answers. ‘You do it all the time.’

‘So we won’t do it anymore,’ Dennis says, sitting up straighter. He knows it’s a lie even as he says it; it’s a lie the way it’s always a lie. _We’ll be better to each other, we’ll be kinder, we’ll be different_. But Dennis is tired of speaking only misery into existence. Tomorrow’s another day. ‘I’ll stop. I won’t if you won’t.’

‘What?’ she asks suspiciously, before her expression clears. ‘With Artemis?’

‘Yep.’ He frowns. ‘Obviously I’m not gonna like, stop giving you a hard time about the acting, and the aging, and the terrible taste in – like, everything –’

‘Got it, thanks,’ Dee snaps.

‘But yeah.’ He clears his throat. It’s not like Artemis hangs around with them all the time. Dennis is definitely getting the better end of the deal. ‘Leave off Mac, and I’ll leave off Artemis.’

Dee pauses.

‘Deal,’ she says. She holds up a finger. ‘On one condition: we don’t tell anyone. This is way too mushy, and I don’t want it getting around and ruining my reputation as a hardass.’

‘Of course we’re not gonna tell anyone,’ Dennis snorts. ‘What are we, amateurs?’

\---

Dennis goes back to work the next day.

‘Oh, thank God,’ Charlie says when Dennis and Mac arrive, shoulders brushing as they walk through the door. Mac is sticking alarmingly close, perhaps under the impression that he can physically shield Dennis from his own nerves. 

Dennis blinks, stopping with his car keys still swinging from his hand. ‘I’ll take that to the bank. Thanks, Charlie.’

Charlie waves a hand. ‘Not about you,’ he says, although his eyes keep jumping, unconsciously happy, from one member of the gang to another. Such a pack animal. He gestures to Mac, who rolls his eyes. ‘He was driving us all crazy.’

‘Not more of this,’ Mac protests. ‘Come on, guys. It wasn’t that bad.’

Dee, Frank and Charlie all start talking at once, way too loudly, until Dennis slams his hand on the bar. They all look at him, eyes wide and startled.

‘Shut up,’ he says, after an uncomfortable minute. ‘What? Stop staring at me. That’s all I have to say. I just wanted you to be quiet.’

‘No big speeches?’ Charlie asks warily. ‘No, like – announcements?’

‘Nothing to announce,’ Dennis says, brisk.

As he passes Mac on his way round behind the bar, he clasps Mac’s wrist briefly before he realises what he’s done. There’s a pause in the rhythm of his strides. That was an overtly coupley thing to do. That was a significant other touch. Dennis did that in front of other people; he didn’t even think about it. And now he can’t take it back.

A muscle pulses in his jaw as he forces himself to keep walking, pretending he never paused. That’s the irritating thing about being in a relationship with Mac – _one_ of the irritating things. Everything Dennis does is permanent. He can’t wipe the slate clean and start over with somebody new, someone who isn’t deeply aware of all his past mistakes. He can never be anybody but himself. He just has to keep moving forward, with no possibility of perfecting his approach. This is all there is, for real.

He snags a beer from the refrigerator and busies himself getting out a chopping board and a bag of lemons, starts chopping garnishes they don’t need. He senses the flurry of looks being exchanged in front of him but doesn’t wade into it, just chops limes and lemons into precise segments and counts to ten in his head over and over again until the gang disperses, and Mac is the only one left in front of him. The warmth of his gaze plays along Dennis’s cheeks.

‘What,’ Dennis says tersely, taking a swig of his beer. ‘If you’ve got something to say, then say it. Don’t just stare at me.’

‘You did really good,’ Mac tells him, leaning over the bar and watching Dennis work. He sounds happy, almost giddy. It makes Dennis’s stomach tighten. ‘That was great, Den.’

Dennis rolls his eyes.

‘I’m not a child,’ he says. ‘You don’t need to put it on the refrigerator.’

Mac snorts. ‘Baby’s first coming out.’

Dennis’s hands pause on the chopping board.

‘Better than mine,’ Mac continues hurriedly. ‘Obviously.’ He clears his throat. ‘Although it’s not really a fair comparison,’ he rambles. ‘Seeing as I was always single and you’ve got someone to, uh. Someone to –’

‘Someone to shut up and get me the plastic wrap before I scream?’ Dennis interrupts, eyebrow raised.

Mac frowns. ‘Hey, give me a chance,’ he says. ‘I’m trying. I haven’t done this part before either, you know?’

Dennis looks up quickly and then down again. Mac looks more stung than he should over such a small slight. Dee’s assessment of the situation parades through his head again, just as irritating as it has been for the last twenty-four hours: _I’m not the one fucking someone I’m ashamed of._

How is Dennis supposed to stop Mac thinking that when he’s already bending as far as he can? He doesn’t know how to do this. He doesn’t even usually want to – make something better, heal some pain he didn’t even intend to cause. But it’s not fair, that Mac might think that. It demeans both of them, to assume Dennis would put so much on the line for someone he didn’t even – someone he couldn’t own up to wanting. Mac should have better self-esteem.

Dennis drums his fingers against the chopping board. If this is all there is, they should make the most of it. Maybe he can bend a little further than he thought.

‘Alright, come here,’ he says.

Mac just looks at him, confused.

‘Come here,’ Dennis says impatiently. ‘Like, come – Jesus Christ.’ He gives up and pulls Mac over the bar by the neck of his t shirt, smearing the collar with lemon juice. He kisses him, for long enough that he can feel Mac’s shuddering exhalation against his lips.

‘There,’ he says, pulling back. He can feel the heat humming in his face, the glances of the couple of regulars who hadn’t yet caught on alighting on them. Someone wolf whistles, sharply cut off by a mutter from a voice that sounds disarmingly like Dee’s.

Dennis gives Mac a little push until he’s back on his own side of the bar. He brushes at the hem of Mac’s shirt until it lies flat across his shoulders again, lemon juice drying in sticky trails. ‘Happy now?’

Mac blinks at him, his eyes wide and surprised. His mouth is still partly open; he looks like he’s been hit by an unexpectedly affectionate truck.

‘Yeah,’ he says, after a long delay. ‘I mean, I was already, but – yeah. Thanks.’

\---

‘You should stay over,’ Dennis tells Mac a week or so later. Cajoles, really. ‘Stay.’

Mac groans. ‘I can’t, you know that. I gotta call an Uber.’

‘This late on a Friday?’ Dennis snorts, stretching up towards the headboard. ‘You’re going to get murdered.’

‘No, I’m not,’ Mac says, eyes following Dennis’s body as he stretches. ‘And you know I’ve got that thing tomorrow, at the studio. The dancing thing. I said I’d help Dee.’

‘She can pick you up from here, can’t she? What difference does it make?’

‘Sleep,’ Mac grouses. ‘Clothes. I ran out of underwear two days ago, man, I’ve gotta go back to the apartment.’

It’s late, past eleven. They’re in bed, heavy rain outside smacking against the windows. Despite his protests, Mac is making no attempt to move. He’s lying next to Dennis on his side, slowly running his fingers up and down Dennis’s naked stomach. Dennis is watching cautiously. Mac likes to touch him so much, Dennis doesn’t really have a frame of reference for it. Even when they’re not having sex; even the parts of him that Mac should objectively dislike. Dennis is waiting, with trepidation, for the fever to break.

Mac shuffles down the bed and kisses Dennis’s stomach, right above his belly button.

Dennis squirms. ‘What the fuck, dude.’

‘What?’ Mac does it again.

‘Stop, it tickles.’

Mac looks up at him, his eyes wide and all innocent-looking. The whites are very white in the darkness; the streetlight ferrets its way through the curtains behind Dennis’s bed and stripes across his face. his hands are comfortably clutched around Dennis’s thighs, holding him in place.

‘You should stay,’ Dennis says again. ‘Stay.’

They’ve started having this conversation at least every couple of days, if not more. They haven’t yet gotten around to having the one that’s running underneath it.

‘He still hasn’t moved back in?’ Dee asks a few days later, after Mac sweeps out of the bar to go and grab a ride home from Rex, pecking Dennis on the cheek as he goes. ‘Jesus. You guys too busy fucking to even talk?’

‘Thanks for reducing a complex issue down to its lowest common denominator as usual, sis,’ Dennis snaps. ‘It’s almost as if I didn’t ask for your opinion.’

It doesn’t help that Dee’s partially right. They don’t spend _all_ their time fucking, but certainly a significant amount. If there was a pie chart, sex would take up a hefty chunk, as would watching cooking shows on Netflix and booing at the losing contestants. They go back to Marcy’s sometimes, to shoot napkin spitballs at the bitchy waitress.

‘It just hasn’t been the right time,’ Dennis tries to explain, unsure why he feels the need. Something about the way Dee is looking at him – almost disappointed, like she expected better. Which is such an absurd concept that Dennis instantly jettisons it from his brain. Just because they had a little heart to heart, she thinks she has the right to judge him. He doesn’t see Artemis moving into _her_ apartment. Dee can’t say shit.

‘Just gotta rip off the Band-Aid,’ Dee tells him. ‘What’s the big deal? You’re all gooey and everything now, it’s not like he’s going to say no.’

_You don’t know that_ sits on the tip of Dennis’s tongue. He keeps expecting something to change –something to falter or fade. He finds himself peering around every corner for traps, danger. If only Mac would fuck up in a way Dennis couldn’t forgive. If only Dennis had the faintest urge to cheat, thereby ruining everything. Then the wait would be over and Dennis wouldn’t be walking on eggshells, trying desperately to prepare himself for when something goes wrong.

They’ve been together for nearly a month. Something has to start going wrong.

Maybe this is it. Maybe if Dennis finally works up the courage to ask Mac to move back in permanently – not just for heady strings of days at a time, not just to sleep over after sex, not just to leave his clothes strewn across Dennis’s floor – then Mac will laugh, reminding Dennis that Rex makes a way better live-in partner. Rex bakes on the weekends – cookies and sheet cake and brownies made with Kahlua and peanut butter, so good they melt in your mouth. Mac brings them to work sometimes in a Tupperware container. Dennis eats them because he can’t bear the humiliation of everyone knowing why he’d be refusing, and then they churn around in his stomach, sickeningly sweet.

‘Bet you twenty dollars he’s waiting for you to ask,’ Dee offers, chomping on a stick of celery from her bloody Mary.

‘And how am I going to find that out?’ Dennis asks, frowning.

‘Well,’ Dee smiles sweetly. ‘I guess you’ll just have to ask him.’

Dee and Artemis’s acting studio doesn’t crash and burn in its first month, either, although not without concerted effort on Dee’s part.

‘Why are you still here all the time?’ Mac wonders. He squints at Dee, who is noticeably hanging out in the bar with the rest of them, drinking a beer. ‘You still come in like, nearly every day. Shouldn’t you be like, out there running your business?’

‘I think that would require her to actually do some work,’ Dennis points out, smirking at the way Dee’s face colours.

‘I do work,’ she says unconvincingly. She seems to hear how it sounds and adjusts her voice. ‘I do. We agreed, when we decided to set it all up, that Artemis would take on the bulk of the classes – you know, screen acting, character acting, pole dancing for beginners – and I’d do theatre directing in between. When I’m –’

‘When you’re needed?’ Dennis finishes. ‘Which is how often, exactly?’

Dee rolls her eyes.

‘And how often are _you_ needed?’ she replies tartly.

Mac’s eyes stray to Dennis, smirking slightly. He opens his mouth.

‘It was a rhetorical question,’ Dee interrupts before he can say anything, her voice pained. ‘Jesus. _Rhetorical._ Please no more sex jokes.’

Dennis concentrates on his beer, feeling his skin flush hot under Mac’s gaze. He loses focus on what Dee is saying. It’s really not that they’re like this all the time, it’s just – last night Mac had made him come three times. Once while Mac fingered him and then again when Mac fucked him, and then again after, when he was all fucked out and sensitive. With breaks in between, obviously. But even so, that hadn’t happened to Dennis very often, and definitely not in the last ten years, anyway. Although it _had_ happened every now and then, and that was still more than it seemed to have happened to Mac. As far as Dennis could tell, Mac had gotten through most of the sex in his life by just kind of going at it like a jackrabbit and trying to come as fast as possible. No wonder he could never keep a girlfriend.

It makes sense. If you don’t really want to be having sex with the person you’re having sex with, that’s what you do to get it done. There’s not much room in that scenario for coming more than once.

With Dennis, Mac seems to be deliberately slowing it down. He likes to hold Dennis’s dick while it’s still soft; he likes to feel it hardening in his hand while he barely does anything, just trails his fingertips along the length and finds all Dennis’s sweet spots, watching Dennis’s face as he gets worked up. Dennis had been weirded out by it at first, until he realised it wasn’t some kind of test – Mac just really likes watching him get hard. He likes watching Dennis squirm around, half-embarrassed and half-turned on by the scrutiny. He gets this hungry look in his eye while he does it, like he could watch Dennis forever and not get bored.

‘Stop teasing me,’ Dennis complains one afternoon, a few weeks later. His voice is thready, not as commanding as he wants it to be. Mac’s had him on his back for half an hour already, teasing him with his fingers. Sometimes he leans down and takes the head of Dennis’s cock gently in his mouth, sucks until Dennis makes a noise and then pulls off again. The last time he did that, Dennis shouted and threw his head back against the pillow. He’d screwed his eyes shut but he could still hear Mac laughing.

Then Mac had shuffled up the bed and straddled Dennis’s waist, leaned forward until he could hold both their cocks in one hand and thrust them slowly together. He was watching Dennis’s face the whole time, his mouth open, panting slightly. Dennis had had to close his eyes, shuddering; he could hardly breathe.

Mac snorts at his protest, leaning down and pinning his wrists to the bed in a gentle, easily broken grip.

Dennis looks up at him, resentful. 

‘God, you’re such a pillow princess,’ Mac mutters, kissing his way across Dennis’s jaw. ‘You want to lie there and be worshipped, but you want it really fast. You want everything, all at once, right now.’

‘I know you’re proud of all the new terms you’ve been learning, but watch how you use them,’ Dennis tells him with a hint of ice in his voice.

‘And you’re bitchy with it, too,’ Mac murmurs.

He sounds so pleased about it that Dennis doesn’t protest, feeling his skin flush with pleasure, and he forgets about it altogether when Mac starts pinching his nipples. He hisses in a hard breath, stomach going almost concave as he tries to pull away and push into the pressure at the same time.

‘Always squirming around,’ Mac tells him, and he’s pulled back now to look at Dennis’s face while he touches him up, pressing one hand to the flat of Dennis’s stomach and the other to his nipple, squeezing and twisting. Dennis bites his lip, making a low groaning sound in his throat. Mac’s lips twitch. ‘So whiny.’

‘You want me to whine,’ Dennis says, freeing his own hand from the sheets and tripping his fingertips down Mac’s abs to his groin before grabbing his cock.

Mac chokes with surprise, his hands stilling on Dennis’s chest. Dennis loosens his grip and presses down kinder, softer, but still firm; giving Mac something to grind into while he makes his voice low and sweet.

‘You want me to tell you how to fuck me?’ he asks. ‘Can’t figure it out for yourself?’

Mac doesn’t rise to the bait; he just holds really still for a second before he lets out a half-laugh, grinding into Dennis’s hand with a satisfied sigh that goes straight to the base of Dennis’s stomach.

Dennis shifts around on the bed, bumping his hips up into thin air in frustration. Mac looks up at him, eyebrow quirked like he knows exactly what Dennis wants, and he’s not going to give it to him until he’s screaming.

‘It’s not my fault you’re so loud,’ Mac tells Dennis, kissing him quickly before he lets himself sink into the cradle of Dennis’s spread legs, watching the way Dennis’s face changes at the friction, the way his eyelids flutter closed. ‘So needy about it, you have to feel like you’re telling me what to do –’

‘Because otherwise you’d drag it out until we’re eighty,’ Dennis snaps, grabbing at Mac’s shoulders and trying to force him into a satisfying rhythm.

‘I’ll fuck you when we’re eighty,’ Mac pants. ‘I’ll fuck you when we’re ninety and you’ve got – liver spots and arthritic hips, Den –’

‘That’s so disgusting,’ Dennis gets out, wrapping his leg around Mac’s waist. They both groan, Mac’s head dropping between his shoulders. ‘Get a condom, _now_.’

After they’re done, they lie in bed catching their breath while Dennis trails his hand over the curve of Mac’s bicep, thumbing over the eagle tattoo.

‘Would you ever get more?’ he asks, partly out of genuine curiosity and partly as a distraction. He feels very exposed when they lie here like this; Mac is prone to just staring at him, and they still have all the lights on. It would be a prime opportunity to ask the sorts of questions Dennis probably needs to ask, but whenever he thinks about it, they all just kind of slide away from him. Who needs clarification when he has this? He doesn’t want to spoil anything.

‘Depends,’ Mac says, watching Dennis’s hand out of the corner of his eye. ‘Would _you_ ever want me to get anything?’

Dennis tries to laugh but it sounds weird. ‘What, like – you don’t mean my name or –’

‘No, no,’ Mac says quickly. Dennis can’t help imagining it anyway: _Dennis_ in tacky cursive looping across Mac’s right pec. It would be horrendously distasteful, like all Mac’s current tattoos, but to Dennis’s irritation he finds there’s something really satisfying about the idea of branding Mac for life like that. The idea that Mac would get an oversized, ugly tattoo just because he wanted to commemorate their relationship. People do stupid shit like that all the time without thinking, but Mac has clearly thought about this before. He’s _that_ into Dennis: shitty tattoo levels of into Dennis.

‘Well, don’t,’ Dennis says again after a long moment of Mac watching him uncomfortably, waiting for Dennis’s judgment. ‘It would be weird. Don’t.’

‘I’m not going to,’ Mac says, swinging his head away. Dennis can’t help smiling a little. He looks so young when he does that, like a child who hasn’t got his way. Such a punk. ‘I meant like, something you helped me choose. Something that could be about us without being like, _about_ us, you know?’

‘Not really,’ Dennis says honestly.

Mac sighs. ‘Not your name, but like – some picture that reminded me of you, or some word or something.’

‘What, so you can torture yourself with it if something goes wrong?’ Dennis snorts, but there’s an attractive element to that idea too, one it gives him a sick, sharp pleasure to contemplate: Mac hurting and heartbroken and unable to stop obsessing over part of his body that reminds him of Dennis. There probably couldn’t be a greater exercise of Dennis’s power over him. Just the thought of it jars Dennis so much he has to take a deep breath to try and resituate himself.

It wouldn’t be kind, but then when has he ever worried about that? It would be a really nasty thing to do, encouraging Mac to get a tattoo for them with the sole intention that it will hurt him once they break up. It’s exactly the sort of thing Dennis would do.

Mac has gone quiet. He’s staring down at the sheets and picking at the threads. Dennis bites his lip.

‘If you did that, it would only be fair if I did it too,’ Dennis says, against his better judgment. That seems like a decent middle ground: even if he can’t stop himself goading Mac into it one day, he can at least fuck himself over into the bargain as payback.

Mac looks up. ‘You’d do that?’ He sounds genuinely shocked.

Dennis holds up a hand with his thumb and pinkie folded down. ‘Only if it was small, discreet and somewhere relatively painless,’ he stipulates, folding down fingers one by one. He wrinkles his nose. ‘No tacky sailor girls or weird tribalistic shit, okay?’

‘Yeah,’ Mac agrees, nodding eagerly. ‘I wouldn’t – I mean, yeah. We could decide together, anyway.’

‘Whatever,’ Dennis says. The way he sees it, the hurdle of deciding to permanently brand yourself for someone else is big enough that once you’ve gotten over it, it barely matters what you get. Nothing offensive, sure, but as far as the rest of it goes, who cares if Mac wants a skull or a star? It’s all the same to Dennis. The significance is in the act of agreeing to it in the first place. ‘You can choose. It’s not like anyone but you is going to see it anyway.’

Mac looks at him oddly.

‘What?’ Dennis asks. ‘I said somewhere discreet, right? Somewhere no one else will see.’

‘Yeah,’ Mac says after a pause. ‘You said that.’

‘Well, what?’ Dennis asks, his voice getting snippy. ‘Why are you staring at me like that?’

‘You –’ Mac starts. But then he shakes his head, a smile cracking out of his mouth in a sudden burst. ‘Never mind, just – come here. You’re weird. Come here.’

Dennis frowns but goes anyway, lets himself be kissed. It seems easier than the trouble of protesting when he doesn’t really want to. Mac can think he’s weird so long as he keeps reeling Dennis in with a hand firm on the back of Dennis’s neck, as if there’s no possibility of Dennis saying no.

\---

In the end the subject comes up by accident, one rainy Saturday afternoon when they’re hanging out in the apartment.

‘This cereal sucks, dude,’ Mac tells him through a mouthful. He’s sat on the couch sideways with his feet in Dennis’s lap while Dennis watches _Say Yes To The Dress_ and Mac, as far as Dennis can gather, watches Dennis. ‘It’s all full of like, bran and vitamins and shit. It tastes like crap.’

‘It’s good for you,’ Dennis says absently. He throws up his hands. ‘Why isn’t she going with the scoop neck? A high neckline does nothing for her. Does she want to look like a spinster on her wedding day?’

‘I don’t think she can hear you, Dennis,’ Mac comments. ‘And just because something’s good for you doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck.’

‘It’s low calorie,’ Dennis insists.

‘Again,’ Mac says, speaking with his mouth open and still full of food, ‘that doesn’t mean it doesn’t –’

‘Why are you eating it, if you hate it so much?’

‘Because I’m hungry,’ Mac complains. ‘And you never have any fucking food in the fridge, dude. I don’t even know how you’re still alive.’

‘Maybe you should move back in and buy your own fucking food, then,’ Dennis snaps. Then he hears his own words echoing back to him, and he slams his mouth shut.

Mac stops chewing. There’s a pause. He swallows his mouthful, the sound hideously loud in the silence.

‘Do you mean that?’ he asks.

Not letting him get away with it, then. Of course not; that would be far too much to hope for. Dennis taps his fingers against the hard line of the bone in Mac’s calf. Calf bone. That can’t be what it’s called, that’s absurd. He wants to look it up on his phone but it’s all the way over on the coffee table and he’s trapped by Mac’s legs, his gaze, the weight of his body.

‘Why else would I say it?’ Dennis asks, at length.

‘Because you’re a little bitch who’s too cheap to buy the cereal your boyfriend likes,’ Mac says. His voice is very tense.

Dennis twitches. ‘We haven’t decided on boyfriend yet,’ he reminds Mac. ‘It’s too immature, it’s –’

‘For teenagers, I know,’ Mac finishes. He sighs and leans over to set down his cereal bowl on the coffee table. When he sits back, he fixes his full attention on Dennis. Dennis’s heart starts thumping, so loud he’s amazed Mac doesn’t seem to hear. ‘Do you think it’d change anything?’ Mac asks. ‘You know. If I did move back in.’

Dennis looks at him, confused enough that it overwhelms his fear of what he might find on Mac’s face. ‘Why would it change anything? You basically already live here. You stay over like, five nights a week.’

‘I know.’ Mac’s jaw works. ‘But right now, there’s like – I can go, if – if you need space, or whatever.’ He gives a half-hearted laugh and drops his gaze to his hands, twisting in his lap. ‘If you get sick of me.’

_If something goes wrong_. Dennis hears it, even if Mac doesn’t actually say it. His hand tightens on Mac’s leg. He’s been thinking the same thing for weeks but now, hearing the words from Mac’s mouth, they seem a lot smaller than they did in his head. Even a little ridiculous. That’s a risk people take, isn’t it? Sooner or later, that’s a possibility you have to face. And it’s not even like this is the first time. They’ve been here before – they were here when Dennis left for North Dakota and they were here in January, whether they talked about it or not. They’ve been breaking each other’s hearts since they moved in together; it’s not like any of this is new.

Although it does feel different this time, Dennis will allow that. It’s going to nuke them if this goes wrong. It’ll blow a hole in the gang, whether they live together or not.

‘That hasn’t happened so far,’ Dennis says carefully.

‘No,’ Mac concedes. He draws his legs up towards his chest, dragging his feet out of Dennis’s lap. Dennis resists the urge to wrap his fingers around Mac’s legs like a vise, pull them back. With that weight gone, he doesn’t know what to do with his hands. ‘But it did before. You can’t say it won’t happen again.’

He sounds so unhappy, Dennis wishes he could take it all back. They were getting along fine without talking about any of this. Maybe eventually Mac would just have filtered all his clothes over, all his stupid hair gel and his toothbrush and his spare pair of shoes, and Dennis could have been satisfied with that, without ever having to make Mac choose.

It wouldn’t be the same, though. Not really.

Dennis makes a noise of frustration. His eye catches on Mac’s jacket, hung up on the back of the door. The bikes they never ride, propped up against the wall. The lump of laundry sitting in the basket from five days ago which they still haven’t sorted because it’s boring and it takes too long and they always get distracted and end up having sex midway through. Mac’s clothes are mixed in there, too, now. He’s been spending too much time here to ferry everything back to his own apartment. They live together. They do. In all the fucking ways that matter, they’re already doing this, so why does Dennis have to beg for it again? How many more times does he have to make himself clear? It’s there every time Dennis kisses him; every time he asks Mac to stay. It seems unfair that he should have to keep laying it out for Mac as if it isn’t obvious, as if the fact of him touching Mac in the first place doesn’t imply that he wanted it enough to overcome every screaming voice in his brain telling him not to, as if Mac hasn’t made just as many mistakes. They write fucking pop songs about shit like that. Why can’t Mac tell? 

‘You’re so fucking annoying,’ Dennis bursts out, way too loud in his exasperation. Mac stares at him. Dennis’s hands scrunch up in the material of the couch cushions, for lack of anything else to hang onto. ‘You’re a terrible roommate. All the food you buy sucks, and you snore. You never paid me anything for bills, even when you had cash to spare. You have the worst taste in clothes, and you fart too much, and you always want to talk about your feelings, even when I don’t want to.’

‘Are you like, going somewhere with this?’ Mac scowls. ‘Because it’s kind of –’

‘I already know you,’ Dennis speaks over him. Mac shuts up. Dennis licks his lips. ‘That’s my point. I already know all that.’ He stares unseeingly at the TV, picking at the fraying material at the edge of the couch cushions. ‘I know what it’s like to live with you. I’m going into this with my eyes wide open, Mac. I can’t – this isn’t going to change anything.’

Mac’s gaze is burrowing into the side of Dennis’s head, but he doesn’t say anything. Dennis swallows, his heart jumping in his chest.

‘Look, we’re going to get sick of each other,’ he says, his voice thin. ‘We will. It happens to everyone. But I’ve been sick of you since we were teenagers. And I still – we still –’ he stops. He takes in a sharp breath and tries again. ‘We’ve got a head start on that, compared to most people. And it still worked, before. We can make it work again.’

He waits for Mac to say something – anything – but nothing comes. He looks over and Mac is frowning at him. His face twists up for a fraction of a second before he looks away, blinking hard.

Shit. Dennis puts a hand on his leg, his voice going quieter. ‘Mac –’

‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ Mac interrupts him, shoving a hand over his eyes. He clears his throat and resettles himself in his seat, facing Dennis again, his eyes shiny and bright. ‘I’m fine. Yeah, okay. Let’s do it. Yes.’

Dennis blinks, hand drawing back. ‘Yes?’ he repeats dumbly. ‘Yes, you’ll move back in? That kind of yes?’

‘What other question were you asking?’ Mac snaps. He sniffs, loud and gross and full of mucus. ‘Obviously that kind of yes, moron.’

‘Don’t call me a moron,’ Dennis says helplessly. ‘God, you’re such an asshole.’

He leans over to Mac’s side of the couch and kisses him, hard and intense. Mac makes a weird sound into the kiss and brings his hands up, clutching the back of Dennis’s head. His breathing has gone all funny and wet, like he’s trying to keep something in but can’t quite manage it.

He doesn’t let Dennis go for a long, long time.

\---

Mac moves back into their apartment on a Tuesday at the beginning of May, just shy of five months after he moved out.

Charlie, Dee and Frank come over mostly to drink coffee, eat pizza, and get in the way, as far as Dennis can tell. It’s not like Mac’s got a lot to carry. Most of his stuff is already here – all that was left at Rex’s was the junk everyone carries from house to house without ever really using. Dennis spots the crucifix sticking out from a familiar-looking box and wonders whether Mac even properly unpacked.

‘We had to be here, man. It’s a historic moment!’ Charlie tells Dennis, watching from the door as Mac carries the final box up the stairs. ‘The boys are back together. You know, until it goes wrong again.’

‘Thanks, Charlie.’ Dennis rolls his eyes. ‘If it gets fucked up, Mac’ll move back in with you guys for a stretch, how’s that?’

‘For like an afternoon?’ Charlie snorts. ‘Yeah, I think we can handle that.’

‘You’re welcome at our place anytime, Mac,’ Frank interjects, sounding like he really means it. ‘So long as you don’t mope around and try to get rid of my toe knife again.’

‘That thing’s a health hazard, Frank,’ Mac calls as he carries the box into his old room. He emerges, dusting off his hands. ‘But thanks. That’s sweet.’

‘Why is everyone talking about this like we’re on the verge of breaking up?’ Dennis wonders aloud.

‘Maybe because you’re so touchy about it,’ Dee remarks, throwing one leg over the other as she watches from the couch. She bats her eyelashes sweetly.

‘I will put laxatives in your coffee again, Dee,’ Dennis promises, eyes narrowing. ‘Don’t fucking test me.’

‘I actually lost a ton of weight the last time you did that,’ Dee snaps back. ‘So the joke’s on you, asshole.’

‘How did Rex feel about all this, anyway?’ Charlie asks Mac, apropos of nothing. ‘Isn’t he kind of pissed he has to find another roommate?’

Dennis tenses, but Mac just shrugs. ‘I was barely there anyway, so.’ He scratches the back of his neck and coughs. ‘He seemed fine about it, actually. He’s been seeing this girl from his support group and they’re kind of, uh. Loud. So.’

‘Feel good to be back?’ Charlie asks, and the expression on Mac’s face in response is so bright that Dennis has to look away, fast, before anyone sees.

Once everyone’s gone, Dennis turns around on the spot, surveying the apartment. It doesn’t look any different, he realises. Literally not an object in the living room is out of place. There’s the weird shit Mac keeps in the refrigerator, but obviously you can’t see that unless you open it.

He frowns. ‘Why doesn’t it look any different?’ he asks. ‘Where’s all your stuff?’

‘In my room.’ Mac rolls his eyes. ‘Which you obviously didn’t touch the whole time I was gone. Do you even know how much dust was in there, bro? It was so thick it gave Dee asthma like, on the spot.’

‘That’s super not how that works,’ Dennis tells him, ignoring the rest of his reply. ‘Why did you put it in there? You’ll just be going back and forth all the time, looking for stuff.’

Mac opens his mouth and closes it again. ‘Going back and forth between …’

‘Your room and mine,’ Dennis says impatiently.

‘You want me to sleep in your room,’ Mac tries, and it’s only now that Dennis hears the note of caution in his voice. ‘Like. All the time?’

Dennis focuses his gaze hard on the sliver of Mac’s room that he can see through the cracked open door. Even now, with the evidence of Mac moving back in literally guiding their conversation, he doesn’t feel completely comfortable looking at it. He’s gotten so used to acting like that area of the apartment wasn’t even there, he’s going to have to rehabilitate himself into treating it normally. Maybe he’ll have to commit to exposure therapy – go in there for half an hour once a week and try not to have a breakdown.

‘Isn’t that the point?’ he asks eventually, his voice irritatingly unsure. He meant it to be a snappy retort, not an actual question. He adjusts his tone, giving a sharp laugh. ‘I mean, isn’t that how this usually goes? Did we skip a step or something?’

‘Oh, we’ve skipped a step,’ Mac assures him. ‘We skipped like, ten steps. I think we might have skipped the whole fucking route, to be honest with you. Just went straight from A to Z.’

‘That doesn’t make any sense,’ Dennis complains. ‘And you didn’t answer my first question.’

Mac clears his throat, folding his arms across his chest. Neither of them are looking at each other, still just staring at the half-open door to Mac’s room. Mac’s _old_ room. The silence hums between them.

‘Well,’ Mac starts. ‘Did you like, make space in your dresser or whatever? Did you move shit around so I can fit in there?’

‘Yes,’ Dennis says tightly. He did it last night, while Mac was still packing up at Rex’s, fitting his life into boxes so he could bring it back over here where it belongs. Dennis hadn’t even thought about it; he’d assumed this was a done deal. So stupid, to assume.

He sees Mac turn to look at him in his peripheral vision, caught by surprise. ‘Really?’

‘Look,’ Dennis says, his voice like ice. ‘If you don’t want to, then –’

‘I want to,’ Mac interrupts him. He’s still watching Dennis, the warmth of his gaze prickling along the back of Dennis’s neck. ‘Did I say I didn’t want to? Don’t put words in my mouth.’

‘I wouldn’t have to if you’d just say yes,’ Dennis snaps, then clamps his mouth shut. It’s fine, he reminds himself, mentally counting to ten. If this is what it takes, then he can wait. Even if it takes a really fucking long time, eventually Mac will feel safe enough to be sure of him. Dennis can give him that. He can wait. It’s not like he’s got anything else to do.

‘But I’m saying yes,’ Mac says, sounding baffled. He puts his hand on Dennis’s shoulder and squeezes, trails it around to the back of Dennis’s neck and pulls him around. Dennis goes belligerently, still avoiding Mac’s eye. ‘I don’t know why we’re arguing,’ Mac tells him plainly, cupping Dennis’s face in his hands. ‘I _want_ to sleep with you. I mean – you know what I mean. Sex too, but – sleep. In your room. Every night.’

‘You do,’ Dennis tests, eyes darting to Mac and away again.

‘I always wanted that,’ Mac says bluntly. ‘Even when you hated me.’ He pauses, his voice gentling. ‘You just had to ask, man.’

Dennis swallows, his mouth dry. ‘So I’m asking,’ he says, with a confidence he doesn’t feel. He struggles to believe it can possibly be that simple, but there’s no complication in the look on Mac’s face. No sign that this is a test or a game. His expression is patient, as if he’s been waiting, too.

Dennis clears his throat and says again, more forcefully: ‘I’m asking.’

‘And I’m saying yes, asshole,’ Mac says, rolling his eyes and pulling Dennis into a kiss, the effect somewhat ruined by his wide grin. ‘Obviously, I’m saying yes.’

**Author's Note:**

> come see me over on tumblr, I have the same username and I love to scream about macdennis!!!! <3 <3 <3


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